Standing Watch

It would appear, in the race to add constitutional amendments to prevent LGBT persons from becoming equal with their heteronormative counterparts, that Texas, as usual, took some fairly extreme measures.  Because, in that effort to keep inequality legal, 22 words brought LGBT Texans much closer to equality than heteronormative Texans would have guessed, or wanted.

It would seem, in the rush to be the most extreme, Texas wins.

The 2005 Constitutional Amendment to the Texas State Constitution, which was overwhelmingly passed in the legislature and ratified by a large majority of voters, includes the following 22 word phrase:

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

That’s right folks, equality for LGBT persons is alive and well in Texas, at least as far as marriage (and the associated legal protections and benefits) is concerned.  Those 22 words outright bans marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, common law marriage, etc, from any state recognition, and has since it was ratified by voters.  While I suspect the courts may rule in a similar way to the California courts, which will leave in place all marriages performed prior to voter ratification as part of a “grandfather” clause, the language is pretty clear in this one.  No marriage is valid, nor anything similar to marriage, within the State of Texas.

Until the legislature again amends the state constitution, and voters again ratify said change, marriage, even between one man and one woman, is not recognized within the borders of the State of Texas.

Equal, one way or another!

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, Democratic Party candidate for Texas Attorney General, pointed out the 22 words, calling it a massive mistake on the part of the current GOP AG, Greg Abbott, who failed to check the language of the amendment when he vetted it during the mass hysteria being created by religious extremist groups in the US about same sex marriage.

Conservatives are claiming Radnofsky is just rehashing old scare tactics used in 2005 in an effort to defeat the amendment.  According to Abbott spokesperson, Jerry Strickland, Abbott stands behind the four year old Constitutional Amendment, and says the state’s marriage statute does not conflict with it.  Kelly Shackleford, president of the Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, TX, claims Radnofsky’s claims are “silly.”  She asserts there is a “one in a trillion” chance that any court would side with her interpretation that the phrase, contained in Section B of the Amendment, effectively bans marriages of any kind, including between one man and one woman.

Last October, Dallas District Court Judge Tena Callahan had ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, because it denies same-sex couples the right to divorce.  Abbott is appealing her ruling, which came about as a result of a divorce petition filed by two men married in Massachusetts in 2006.

Radnofsky, who herself voted against the 2005 amendment, admits that she herself hadn’t spotted the massive error when she was a member of the legislature at the time.  She only spotted the wording and realized its true implications when she began extensive study of the Texas Constitution in preparation for her bid to be the state’s next AG in 2010.  She said she did notify Abbott of the wording and its implications, but Abbott chose to ignore her.

It would seem the biggest threat to heterosexual marriage isn’t same sex marriage, after all.  As Texans, and many others, were so fond of saying after the passage of California’s Proposition 8, the VOTERS have spoken!  As I said earlier, EQUAL, one way or another.  Texans now know how it feels to have the majority decide the validity of their relationships, even if they, like most conservatives, feel the rules they apply to others simply do not apply to them.