The Supreme Court refused Friday to block the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages from taking place next week. The justices declined without comment to intervene and block clerks from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in Massachusetts. That state's highest court had ruled in November that the state Constitution allows gay couples to marry, and declared that the process would begin on Monday.
A stay had been sought by a coalition of state lawmakers and conservative activists. A federal judge ruled against them on Thursday, and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision on Friday, setting up the Supreme Court appeal. The appeals court agreed to hear arguments on the request to bar same-sex unions in June, after several weeks of legal gay marriages.
Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, had told justices in a filing that they were not asking the Supreme Court "to take any position on the highly politicized and personally charged issue of same-sex marriage." Instead, Staver wrote, they wanted the court to consider whether the Massachusetts judges wrongly redefined marriage. That task should be handled by elected legislators, he said.
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Now here's the part I find amusing...this "Liberty Counsel". With a name like that, you'd think they would be akin to the ACLU, defending the rights of people to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. This couldn't be farther from the truth..but they ARE just the sort you'd expect to jump in the middle of this. Liberty Counsel actually has very little to do with promoting 'liberty". Their stated purpose is "advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family." Put simply, they are against homosexuals, abortion, and anyone non-christian. Yeah, lots of liberty there.