NOT QUITE UTOPIA….Just another example of conservatives relying on the judiciary instead of the democratic process to further their social agenda.
LANSING — The state appeals court on Friday dismissed a challenge to the Ann Arbor school district’s same-sex benefits policy but avoided the bigger legal issue by tossing out the case on a technicality.
…The Thomas More Law Center sued in 2003, and on appeal it argued that Proposal 2 — a constitutional amendment passed by voters last November that recognizes only a union between a man and a woman as a marriage “or similar union for any purpose”– prevents the district and other publicly funded entities from providing health insurance and retirement benefits to gay couples [and straight unmarried couples – Julie] in future contracts.
But the appeals court sidestepped the Proposal 2 question.
It instead agreed with a Washtenaw County judge, ruling the taxpayers did not “demand” that the schools stop providing the benefits to employees’ gay partners — a requirement under state law. They had sent letters to school board members asking them to stop the policy.
“Plaintiffs’ letters are merely a request that the alleged misappropriation stop; they are not a demand for legal action,” the judges wrote.
Prop 2 is the amendment the voters added to the Michigan Constitution which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and ends both same-sex and opposite-sex partner benefits. This not only illustrates another deeply troubling consequence of the amendment, it reveals just how hostile the haters are to individual liberty. It’s really sickening that they’re so violently opposed to letting people live their private lives as they like that they’ll plead a court to get involved in the employee benefits policy of a local school district. And these are, of course, the same people who want to impose a greater tax burden on the middle class, phase out their social security benefits and cut funding for their healthcare benefits, if they’re lucky enough to have them, making it even harder for same-sex and nontraditional families to make ends meet.
Hmmm…I wonder what Sir Thomas More, whose memory is invoked by the organization suing the school boards, would have to say about this.
From Sir Thomas More’s Utopia.
OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE UTOPIANS
…Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no
other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than
that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of
managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all
the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without
danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that
they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low
rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if
they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the
show of public authority, which is considered as the representative
of the whole people, then they are accounted laws…
OF THEIR SLAVES AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES.
…if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect…
Ah well, he must have been one of those anti-Christian liberals Bill Frist was talking about.
