Q Toon: Ten Moore Commandments

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Callie V.S. “Ginny” Granade ruled that Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Alabama's chief justice, Roy Moore, responded by instructing his state's judges and civic officials that they were to ignore the federal ruling. Moore's theory is that federal courts "lack authority" to rule on state laws.

In a later interview, he went so far as to pledge to defy the U.S. Supreme Court if it should rule in favor of marriage equality this year:

“This power over marriage, which came from God under our organic law, is not to be redefined by the United States Supreme Court or any federal court,” Justice Moore told “Fox News Sunday.” ... “I would not be bound thereby.”

As I noted Tuesday, Moore came to national attention by insisting upon erecting a graven image of the Ten Commandments at the Alabama Judicial Building; so that's where I went for this week's cartoon:

Q Syndicate✒Feb 19, 2015

The man has been on a lifelong moral crusade to establish a Christian caliphate. In his 1999 campaign for the Chief Justiceship, he charged that the decline of Christianist hegemony

"corresponded directly with school violence, homosexuality, and crime." His message was identical to the one in his previous race: "We must return God to our public life and restore the moral foundation of our law."

Notice how homosexuality is lumped in there between school violence and crime?

Moore's antigay animus returned to the fore in D.H. v. H.H., a custody dispute before his court in 2002. A divorced lesbian had sued for custody of her children, alleging abuse by her ex-husband. A circuit court in Alabama had ruled in favor of the father, but the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals overturned that verdict 4-1, finding that substantial evidence existed of abusive behavior by the father.

But as far as Moore was concerned, the abusive father's behavior was nothing compared to that of the sinful lesbian mother:

"Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it. That is enough under the law to allow a court to consider such activity harmful to a child. To declare that homosexuality is harmful is not to make new law but to reaffirm the old; to say that it is not harmful is to experiment with people's lives, particularly the lives of children."

One can only hope, thirteen years later, that Moore's little experiment in seeing whether those children would fare well under the roof of that abusive father was not as harmful as any sane person would expect it to be.

And that even Alabama can evolve into a civilized society in which it is the abusive father, not the lesbian mother, whose behavior is considered "an inherent evil, ... so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it."

Q Toon: Contempt of Court

In discussing last week's "Ground Hog Day" cartoon, I mentioned that state lawmakers were proposing new anti-marriage laws in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling for marriage equality.

The Texas legislature is considering a bill by Rep. Cecil Bell (R-Waller Co.) to garnish the salary of any government official who issues a marriage license to a same sex couple or in any way respects the rights of such a couple married out of state.

In Oklahoma, well-known homophobe Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) has vomited forth bills that states that “No employee of this state and no employee of any local governmental entity shall officially recognize, grant or enforce a same-sex marriage license and continue to receive a salary, pension or other employee benefit at the expense of taxpayers of this state.”

Kern's bills are on such constitutionally shaky ground that they include a provision demanding that state courts automatically dismiss any legal challenge to them. (Why, if only Obamacare or McCain-Feingold had had such a provision!)

Q Syndicate✒Jan 29, 2015

Kern's fellow representative Todd Russ (R-Cordell) tries another tack around the court with a bill prohibiting government officials from issuing any marriage licenses -- and nobody but "an ordained or authorized preacher or minister of the Gospel, priest or other ecclesiastical dignitary of any denomination" would be allowed to perform marriages and issue "marriage certificates." If you're agnostic or atheist couple, you're shit out of luck (but then, living in sin shouldn't bother you anyway.) You can bet that there's something in the bill's language to disallow certificates of same-sex couples even if signed by clergy.

When I initially proposed this week's cartoon idea to the editors at Q Syndicate, I had the TV host wondering whether there was something unconstitutional about the laws proposed by my fictional state lawmaker, Jim Beautron (R-Menda City). I realized that I needed to take a different tack when I read that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pushing a constitutional amendment prohibiting American courts from overturning anti-marriage laws.

Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) likes Cruz's idea. On the flip side of the coin, presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee (R-AR) thinks states should just give American courts the finger and ignore any ruling that they don't like. I guess if you think that the Constitution is irrelevant, why bother amending it?

Of course, I know that these elected officials (R-Wherever) don't think the Constitution is irrelevant. They still believe that the Constitution explicitly prohibits whatever President Obama does from the milk he pours on his breakfast cereal to the pajamas he wears to bed. And it will be no different if Hilary Clinton is president.

But these you-can't-challenge-my-law provisions and let's-pretend-courts-don't-matter arguments are pretty clear signs that the Republicans making them know they don't have a legal leg to stand on.