Читать книгу Texas Confidential - Michael Varhola - Страница 21

TEXANS ARE BIG INTO RIGHTS—unless they involve sex, gays, or other people in general. And sometimes, the effort to control what other people do can backfire. That is what very nearly happened with Proposition 2, a poorly written amendment to the state constitution that one can almost imagine being scratched out by shoeless rednecks on the lid of a cracker barrel.

Proposition 2 was one of nine items on the statewide Constitutional Amendment Election ballot held on November 8, 2005, and was among the seven approved by Texas voters, of whom 76.25 percent voted for and 23.74 percent against it (with Travis County, where the state capital of Austin is located, being the only county to oppose it).

Passage of this proposition created an amendment to the Texas Constitution intended to limit marriage in Texas to traditional male-female relationships and prohibit alternative legal arrangements of a similar sort. In short, even though same-sex marriages, plural marriages, and civil unions were already prohibited under state law, the backers of the proposition saw fit to push through a showy and redundant modification to the state constitution.

This amendment reads:

(a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.

(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Opponents of the proposition, however—including the nonprofit group Save Texas Marriage—assert that by leaving out key words, legislators are technically invalidating even traditional marriage, because section “b” negates section “a.”

“A greedy insurance company, tricky divorce lawyer, or a liberal Austin activist judge can easily use these words to overturn traditional marriage and cause people to lose health insurance, tax breaks, and pensions,” said San Antonio’s Beacon Hill Presbyterian Church’s Rev. Tom Heger in an automated telephone call that went out to about two million households statewide, with an emphasis on seniors.

Those in favor of the amendment indignantly noted that this appeal was merely a “smokescreen” intended to confuse voters on the issue.

Four years after the amendment passed, it again received statewide attention, when a candidate for Texas attorney general once more attacked it on the merits of its grammar. In November 2009, Barbara Ann Radnofsky stated her belief that, because marriage is, by definition, identical to itself, the amendment does in fact outlaw all marriage in the state. Whether this stance harmed or helped her cause, she did not win the election.

Texans are big into rights—unless they involve sex, gays, or other people in general.

The amendment was also challenged on the basis of its intended purpose of targeting certain segments of the population. On October 1, 2009, Dallas District Judge Tena Callahan struck it down on the grounds that it denied same-sex couples equal treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was in response to a lawsuit filed by a same-sex Dallas couple whom had married in Massachusetts in 2006 but were attempting to get divorced in Texas, as Massachusetts only permits state residents to file for divorce.

Texas Governor Rick Perry and state Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed the lower court ruling to the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas, in an attempt to get the decision nullifying the amendment overturned. They got their way, and on August 31, 2010, the higher court reversed the ruling on the basis that the Texas constitutional ban on same-sex marriage does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

To date, no judge in Texas has gone on to use the shoddy wording of the upheld amendment to invalidate the traditional institution of marriage favored by three-quarters of the state’s voters. And, while that will likely never happen, no credit is due to the people who drafted the problematic piece of legislation in the first place.