I think I was wrong; I think it's worse than I thought.

[solarbird]

Hm. I'm reading this again:

Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Let's take out the constitutional and federal parts, and leave in the part that applies specifically to the possible actions of states:

[No]... state... law... shall be shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

I think I'm wrong. I think it'll be used to ban civil unions, too, because any state law that conferred legal incidents of marriage could fall under this clause. So only a state civil unions law that provided none of the benefits of marriage would be allowable under this reading.

That message will be difficult to communicate.

Comments

Re:

[banner.livejournal.com]

Yeah but they didn't say 'legal incidents in toto' (or however you spell that, but I think you know what I mean). If it's not specified, then Johnny Cochran comes along with his chewbacca defense and just tears it up. Putting fears into people about how a law may be misconstrued or abused always works with the general public, because we all see it happen all the time.

Also I think if they didn't want this to apply to couples already married, then they would not have put the word married in there. It's a definite loophole, and someone put it there for a reason, the question is: What is their reason?