Remember when Barack Obama’s DOJ decided to stop defending DOMA in court because the president and the attorney general had concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional and the executive branch may be obligated to enforce the law but it isn’t obligated to defend defend unconstitutional laws so they weren’t gonna do it? Remember how the rightwingers howled about how DOMA was a LAW that had been passed by CONGRESS and the president HAD to defend it in court BECAUSE IT’S A LAW, DAMMIT, and Obama’s refusal to defend DOMA “bordered on treason“?
Remember that? Well, lookie here:
Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some—but not all—of the rights afforded married couples. Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the lawsuit, saying he agreed the new law violated the state constitution. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, hired Madison attorney Lester Pines to defend the state.
Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle in January and fired Pines in March. On Friday, Walker filed a motion to stop defending the case.
The executive branch refusing to defend laws in court: IOIYAR (“it’s okay if you’re a Republican) and IOIYFQ (“it’s okay if you’re fucking queers”).
And it has to be said: all of this drama—amendments passed, laws passed, laws challenged, attorneys hired, attorneys fired, court orders sought—just to prevent gay people from being able to go to their partners’ bedsides during medical emergencies. All of this drama because “Christians” in Wisconsin insist that gay men and lesbians have to die alone or else the marriages of heterosexuals will collapse.
Sigh.
And there are people—some who comment regularly on this blog—whose panties get in a bunch when we describe opposition to marriage equality or anything “substantially similar” as bigotry. What the hell are we supposed to call preventing someone from going to his husband’s side during a medical emergency because some people are delusional paranoids?
Could this asshole find a way to make himself more unpopular? What are they spiking the fucking Kool-Aid with over there?
Jupiter, I detest fucking Republicans! Cruel and mean spirited!
I say we call it 21st Century Supremacy.
The rules don’t apply to hetero schemers / politicians / religious fanatics.
Those people are the enforcers of morality – not the upholders. They are supremacists.
Using the argument about whether X is constitutional or not is now completely irrelevant. The fantastic Supreme Court just threw out the Fourth Amendment (search warrants). Shredded, soaked in kerosene, and burned.
Armed rebellion is about out only choice…it Americans actually gave a shit. But let’s face it; beyond a few protest marches not much will change.
Sad but true. Now what’s on TV tonight?
It’s not the Republican politician’s fault. He is merely trying to get re-elected, which is what politicians of all stripes are supposed to do.
The Democrats are (ostensibly, anyway) the party of gay tolerance, and so a Republican politician’s constituency has to include everybody else, i.e. outright bigots, religious know-nothings, homophobe closet cases, and old people who fear any change that takes them further from their youth and closer to the grave.
In conclusion, only assholes vote Republican.
Dear Dan: Do you get apoplectic when you’re at the zoo and an orangutan throws shit at someone? How about when a piss-ant makes a malodorous or a snail leaves a trail of slime?
It’s nature, guy! Calm. Calm. Do not do what the monkey does.
Call it “differently just.”
I recommend reading this:
http://illusorytenant.blogspot.com/2011/…
We knew Walker was an asshole and the last thing we really wanted was the current occupant of the governor’s mansion screwing up the defense of the domestic partnership registry. His added rationale that paying for the defense was too expensive was particularly offensive but it’s just hard to hate the little toad any more than we already did.
WFA, the hate group now claiming the state’s marriage ban also bans domestic partnerships, pushed the constitutional marriage ban in 2006 explicitly stating that it wouldn’t ban domestic partnerships. They lied about lots of things. The upside is that they had to lie because a majority of the state’s voters favor domestic partnerships. Every little bit of pandering Scotty does makes him that much more vulnerable to the inevitable recall next year.
Evil.
Question: “What the hell are we supposed to call preventing someone from going to his husband’s side during a medical emergency because some people are delusional paranoids?”
Answer: “An untenable political position that will not stand the test of time.”
As an old-fashioned Goldwater Conservative with libertarian leanings, this is the sort of shit that drives me up the wall.
But then I pay my taxes and remember that I can’t afford to vote for a Democrat.
Doesn’t matter. Come Saturday, all of them who really believed will get Taken Up in the Rapture. And the rest will be left down here with the rest of us sinners without a moral leg to stand on.
I hope they’re at least peeling off those “WWJD?” bumper stickers.
Why do they care? How could visitation rights possibly hurt them? Appalling.
Those who “comment regularly on this blog” but support assholes like Walker, and anti-gay bigotry in general, number about 2 or 3 at most (maybe 6 or 7 if you count unregistered). And yes, technically they’re “people,” but they’re really just trolls, as in – generally incoherent, mindlessly contrarian, and get their jollies from offending others.
What you need, Dan, are more opportunities to publicly debate the big-league hatemongers – the Dobsons, Warrens, Gallaghers, etc. You’re smart enough, you’re informed enough, and doggone it – you’ll crush ’em.
The mountains and mountains of shame that history will record on the part of these so-called “Christians” … may be enough to tip the damn continent.
Geeez. I know that eventually — eventually — America will correct this great blot on our nation, and OFFICIALLY put an end to this vicious bigotry. But oh man, the mountains of shame that will be piled up stinking in the sunlight on that day… And these fools just continue to heap that crap higher and higher, apparently unaware (?!!?) that they are, now and forever, on the losing side of history.
@ 14 – Extra Points for the Stuart Smalley reference!!!
😀
I watched the live feed of the debate in the Minnesota house to put this on the ballot (it was a slow work day and I was really bored. The festivities led off with a nice older lady who tried to get an amendment put on the ballot to eliminate divorce in the fine state of Minnesota, stating that she had been married for 41 years, and wanted everyone to be in her situation. After being voted down, she sniped that she was ‘sorry that my colleagues want divorce to be easy’. I thought perhaps that there was some hope for a sensible outcome, but MN will have a vote on whether or not to define marriage as one man, one woman.
What in the fuck is wrong with this country?
He knows gay people are still going to fuck each other, right?
Danny do your panties bunch up when your opposition to marriage equality for polygamists is called out for the BIGOTRY it is?
The part I find most disgusting [after the needless human suffering caused] is the intellectual dishonesty of the right-wing pundits. Ingraham, Limbaugh, &c love to bloviate about Obama doing stuff that Bush and Reagan et al. did with right-wing approval.
Sadly, a great many ‘Merkins really buy this self-serving crap. They have the ethical reasoning of a four year old that steals his sister’s cookie then tells on her when she steals it back.
These fuckers are against the Federal Government stepping on states rights when it comes to marriage equality, but believe strongly that DOMA must be defended at the national level!
But I guess cognitive disonance is only a problem when cognition is happening.
Gay people will never vote for Walker, he doesn’t want their vote anyway, so it’s no big loss to Walker to push the talibangecal supremacy. By doing this, he gets the evangelical-cred so it’s a win-win for him.
Nice, I was starting to miss spending a good chunk of my weekends protesting at the capitol; I guess Walker got lonely.
I have read the law that was passed and the repercussions for not obeying this law is that the hospital’s Medicare/Medicare funding will be shut off. So do the paperwork that says who is and who is not allowed to have a voice in your medical futures. Make sure you are in a facility that relies on funding and lastly find a lawyer who understands it. There are teeth to this law. If it happens then watch everyone organize. They can shoot off at the mouth but that is it for now.
17, you know Minnesota isn’t Wisconsin, right? Minnesota has just started considering a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Wisconsin already passed one of those, back in 2006.
The amendment that passed in Wisconsin says “Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.” Then in 2009, a domestic partnership law was passed. Then somebody sued the state, arguing that domestic partnerships are “a legal status identical or substantially similar to marriage,” which would violate the amendment. The state defended the domestic partnership law anyway. Walker agrees that it violates the constitutional amendment, and wants to stop defending it.
He’s got a point. I despise both Walker and the amendment, and I wish he’d leave domestic partnerships alone, and I can’t wait to vote to recall him…but this is what Wisconsin gets for passing that amendment.
On behalf of sane Wisconsinites(we are here, check out Madison) I apologize for our asshole governor. We are workin’ on getting rid of him.
@!1, I pay my taxes and can’t live under a Republican.
@11: Bullshit – I’m nowhere near the tax brackets on which Democrats want to increase the marginal rate, and not only can I afford my survival, it’s quite a comfortable one. You might not be able to afford a life of unlimited privilege with a rate increase on brackets $80,000/year and up, but survival would certainly not be threatened, even if we CAPPED income at that level (100% marginal tax rate on everything above). Stop blaming taxes for making an unjustifiably extravagant lifestyle unaffordable.
@22: Were you at the protest last Saturday? I think the crappy weather resulted in fewer people than might have showed up otherwise, but I expect it will pick back up as 1) the weather gets nicer and 2) the Republicans scramble to pass legislation before we oust them in the recall elections this Summer and take control of the Senate. Ugh, it’s going to take years to undo the damage caused by poorly-though-out and ill-advised laws.
@26: Cute. Ditto. 🙂
I think I’m the only gay Wisconsin commenter on here (Someone is welcome to prove me wrong). I am very skeptical that the summer recall elections will flip the State Senate, seeing as the areas in question are mostly rural and don’t have too many public employees. The Walker plan, as I can best make out, is: destroy the economy of Madison and Milwaukee through policies guaranteeing that no creative-class people will want to move to either place; intimidate all non-whites from voting; make lots of money selling our natural resources to corporations; destroy public education; keep the de-urbanized remnant in a state of perpetual fear of gays, abortionists, and Muslims.
@27
I’m sorry, but I find it objectionable that the State confiscates 35% of my income. I bet you would feel the same way if I confiscated 35% of your income…