WWSMD?

At the Prop 8 Trial Tracker site, NCLR’s Shannon Minter and Chris Stoll argue against Prop 8 deserving a defense on appeal:

Prop 8 has already had its day in court.  It lost — and not because there weren’t any lawyers to defend it.   Despite hiring a large team of experienced lawyers and putting on the best case they were able to muster, the supporters of Prop 8 were unable to present any good reasons to uphold it.  After giving the proponents ample opportunity to defend Prop 8 and carefully considering their arguments, Judge Walker issued a carefully reasoned decision overturning the measure.

So it is the courts — and not state officials — that have declared Prop 8 unconstitutional.  The only question now is whether state officers should be required to appeal that decision to a higher court.  But the decision to appeal has always been left to the discretion of the responsible state officers.

You know where this is going, right?

The [L.A. Times, to whom Minter and Stoll were responding] seems to be arguing for a requirement that the Governor and Attorney General must appeal all decisions overturning any ballot initiative to the highest court in the land.  But that has never been the law in California, and there is nothing about Prop 8 that should require the responsible officials to abandon the discretion they have always exercised in deciding whether an appeal is in the state’s best interest.

That’s California.

Now, lets go to the opposite end of I-40.

The N.C. House on Monday passed a bill to allow voters to decide in the May primary whether to ban gay marriage in the state Constitution.

The Senate is expected to consider the constitutional amendment proposal as soon as Tuesday.

And then today…

Members of the North Carolina Senate barely passed a motion to place an anti-LGBT constitutional amendment on the ballot in May 2012.

The voters are going to approve it. 

You know it. 

I know it. 

North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast without such a marriage limit in its constitution.

But it is among the majority (albeit slim) of the Confederate states that recognize the reality of transsexualism.

You know…

change of sex?

One aspect of the ‘T’ that Matt Comer is conceding regarding the amendment even though that’s not in the text of the proposed amendment?

SECTION 1. Article 14 of the North Carolina Constitution is amended by adding 6 the following new section:

“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.”

It isn’t anti-T-anything.

And, BTW…

Here’s where the ‘transgender’ vs. ‘transsexual’ conflict actually is relevant: Just what the fuck is Comer intending by ‘T’ in his  ”anti-LGBT”?  A ‘T’ that includes cross-dressers?  Well, how is this anti-same-sex-marriage amendment actually anti-cross-dresser in operation of law? 

Hint: it isn’t. 

 The only ‘T’ that could possibly be affected in terms of actual operation of law would be transsexuals (or perhaps someone who prefers ‘transgender’ but has nevertheless effectuated a legal status transition) - and that won’t the case be unless courts decide to make it so…

which, based on legal history and the history of transsexualism and transsexual legal history, they shouldn’t…

unless…

after seeing gay publications implicitly concede the point before the amendment ever becomes operative…

which it will.

When the North Carolina anti-marriage amendment has become part of the state’s constitution – and I said ‘when,’ not ‘if’ – at some point, someone who has utilized that state’s 1975 transsexual birth certificate statute is going to be challenged in attempting to marry a person of the transsexual’s now-opposite sex.

And perhaps someone who has yet to utilize the statute and who is not ever intending to marry anyone will be challenged in attempting to make use of that statute.

Today…

[Primary sponsor Sen. James Forrester (R-Gaston)] said the amendment was intended to defend the “an institution in our society based upon the complementary male and female loin.”

“Moms and dads are not interchangeable,” Forrester continued. “Two dads don’t make a mom. Two moms don’t make a dad. Children need both a father and a mother.”

Tomorrow….

A North Carolina governor and attorney general deciding that the state’s 1975 transsexual birth certificate statute doesn’t need defending because it self-evidently was wiped out by the christianist biology lesson implicltly contained in the anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment?

What will all of those who are salivating over the possibility of Prop 8 dying because of a lack of defense do when transsexual rights are on the gurney in the death chamber…

with no one defending them?

My guess is that they’ll all – even the privileged trans ones – be shitfaced at wedding receptions in New York and never even notice…

much less care.