Wisconsin Republicans Pretending Now, Legal Action Just a Taunt

Update III: See also Scott Walker Continues to Dodge Questions about Marriage Equality: "Gov. Scott Walker has a history of forcefully opposing same-sex marriage in Wisconsin, but in the wake of the state's ban on gay marriages being found unconstitutional the Republican leader said Thursday that his own views about the issue do not matter. ... Walker's reluctance to stick to his hard-line position may be explained by recent polls showing growing public support for same-sex marriages."

Update II: "Who is Van Hollen kidding? Does he really think that county clerks should be prosecuted for doing their jobs after a federal judge threw out the state's ​constitutional ​ban on same-sex marriage? It sounds like the last desperate gasp of a losing argument." (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial, June 13, 2014)

Update: Head bigot in charge, GOP frontman J.B. Van Hollen, is threatening County Clerks issuing marriage licences (Sixty-three of Wisconsin's 72 counties). County clerks "can be jailed for up to nine months and fined up to $10,000 for issuing marriage licenses that aren't allowed under state law," a situation Van Hollen asserts contradicting the clear declaration in Judge Crabb's opinion. (Marley and Ferguson, MJS) See Van Hollen ready to arrest County Clerks over Gay and Lesbian Marriage Licenses. Police state not far behind and Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen: a genuine, grade-A jackass.

This is Van Hollen blowing smoke, more taunts from a frustrated and corrupt attorney general.

I say to GOP district attorneys and the Wisconsin Dept of Justice: I dare you.
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"To the extent that defendants [Scott Walker and J.B. Van Hollen] mean to argue a special rule should apply to the issue of same-sex marriage, they cite no authority for that view. There is no asterisk next to the Fourteenth Amendment that excludes gay persons from its protections," reads the declaration, opinion and order of U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in Wolf v. Walker.

Republicans are still pretending Judge Crabb doesn't mean what she writes. (Eckholm, New York Times)

Scott Walker and Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen hate the idea that individuals have rights exceeding what Walker and Van Hollen wish in their view of the world where some people are more equal than others, but they can read the writing on the wall.

The Fourteenth Amendment, the equal protection clause and substantive due process, yikes.

GOP lead hack and proud bigot, Rick Esenberg, still feigns he can't get over the Fourteenth Amendment, writing "To draw analogies to race is sloppy. First, it is clear that [if] the Fourteenth Amendment was about anything, it was about race."

Esenberg's new pretend findings on the Fourteenth Amendment—it's really just a taunt against gays aping Justice Marshall's words in Stanley v. Georgia (1969)—would come as a shock to Justice Kennedy who writes in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that:

We conclude the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. For this inquiry we deem it necessary to reconsider the Court’s holding in Bowers.

There are broad statements of the substantive reach of liberty under the Due Process Clause in earlier cases, including Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923); but the most pertinent beginning point is our decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

Esenberg and bigoted wing of the Republican Party, pretty much the whole Party, prefer the statist, reactionary jurisprudence of Bork and Scalia over those liberals so concerned about individual rights, liberty, and equality under the law.

But Esenberg and the Republicans will soon go the way of the reasoning of the Bowers Court (and the dissenting justices in Griswold): "Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots."

Gays need to understand what God has wanted for 1,000s of years, Republicans say.

Most Americans say: Screw that.