Gov. Pat McCrory
After Equality North Carolina delivered a petition with 12,000 signatures to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory asking him to stop defending the state ban on marriage equality, the governor responded to a local media outlet:
“We’re going to let the process work,” McCrory said. “During that process we ought to have a stay to allow the current law to remain in place, but this is going to the Supreme Court for all the states. … I firmly believe a marriage is between a man and woman, but I’m going to respect our Supreme Court and the Constitution of the U.S., and that’s what we ought to let happen.”
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has said that he will no longer defend the state’s ban on marriage rights for same-sex couples.
No word on why the stay on marriage only applies to gay and lesbian couples. The Supreme Court’s only ruling on the right to marry is in the Loving v. Virginia case. In that case, the court ruled heterosexual couples of different races have the right to marry. The court, however, has never ruled that heterosexuals of the same race have the right to marry.
INDIANA and WISCONSIN
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard two cases challenging marriage bans in Indiana and Wisconsin. In June, federal judges in both states struck down the states’ bans on marriage equality. Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples in each state were married prior to the states’ attorneys general obtaining stays on the rulings.
The Indiana case is a consolidation of three cases. Paul Castillo, a Lambda Legal attorney based in the Dallas office, is the lead attorney in one of the cases.
FLORIDA
Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who is on her 4th marriage
After Florida’s marriage law was declared unconstitutional for the fifth time last week, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who believes in traditional marriage so much she was recently married for the fourth time, said she will continue to defend the ban on gays and lesbians getting married even once.
“This is me doing my job as attorney general,” Bondi said. “And I will continue to do that and if anybody wants me to moderate my message or stand for less I have a message for them: I am just getting started.”
By just getting started, we’re not sure if she means she’s already planning her fifth marriage — one for every time the Florida law’s been declared unconstitutional.
Bondi is up for re-election this year.
The Sun Sentinal, a Broward and Palm Beach County newspaper said this in an editorial: “The state of Florida — actually, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott — have lost. They need to admit it and give it up.”
Regarding Bondi and her “traditional” marriage as it’s existed since Biblical times, we have no word on whether her husband paid two goats and a camel for her, or if that dowry is paid only by a first husband.
OREGON
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Organization for Marriage does not have standing to appeal a ruling in favor of marriage equality in Oregon. In May, a federal judge struck down the state’s marriage ban. Since no state officials would defend the ban, including state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, NOM appealed the decision. The judge ruled that the group lacked standing, at which time NOM appealed to the Ninth Circuit.