Married Minority?

Married people aren't in the minority. Married households may be if you really bend the figures but since a married household has 2 married people in it, about 60% of those over 25 are married. Also many of the other households are the divorced and widowed who have been married.

NJ SSM Case

From the dissent:

But there is another dimension to the relief plaintiffs’ seek. In their presentation to the Court, they speak of the deep and symbolic significance to them of the institution of marriage. They ask to participate, not simply in the tangible benefits that civil marriage provides -- although certainly those benefits are of enormous importance -- but in the intangible benefits that flow from being civilly married. Chief Justice Marshall, writing for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, has conveyed some sense of what that means:

Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship,
intimacy, fidelity, and family. “It is an association that promotes a way of life, not
causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial
or social projects.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965). Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed
institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition. [Goodridge v. Dep’t. of Pub. Health, 798 N.E. 2d 941, 954-55 (Mass. 2003).]

Plaintiffs are no less eloquent. They have presented their sense of the meaning of marriage in affidavits submitted to the Court:

[Plaintiff's statements elided]

By those individual and personal statements, plaintiffs express a deep yearning for inclusion, for participation, for the right to marry in the deepest sense of that word. When we say that the Legislature cannot deny the tangible benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, but then suggest that “a separate statutory scheme, which uses a title other than marriage,” is presumptively constitutional, ante at ___ (slip op. at 7), we demean plaintiffs’ claim. What we “name” things matters, language matters.

Since two of the Plaintiff's in this action are Episcopal priests with full sacerdotal powers, they can marry the other plaintiffs in church with flowers, incense, a sung high mass, the whole nine yards. They can use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer marriage ceremony.

As the Majority points out, New Jersey courts have already ruled that anyone can say they're married (can characterize their relationship in any fashion they desire).

Is there really anyone so degraded that "the intangible benefits that flow from being civilly married" are important to them. That they require the government to bless them.

The beauty of sacramental marriage is that the bride and groom marry each other and confer the sacrament on each other. It's the only sacrament that can be regularly (in non-emergency circumstances) performed by civilians who are unordained. I guess secularists feel the need for a government sacrament because they are missing others.

Rendition

There is no guarantee or "quality control" that inherently insures that citizens or greencard holders won't be swept into this extraconstitutional dragnet.

Were this true then the US-born Saudi Arabian captured in Afghanistan would not have been brought to the US for processing and then released after he renounced. They would just have sent him to Gitmo or shot him. But they didn't.

DemonCats like FDR lock up 70K native-born US citizens w/o charges and they get a pass. George locks up 2, yes 2 for a while, releases one and convicts the other at trial and the terror-symps in the country get the vapors. We're talking 2 guys here. Not exactly a problem.

BTW, just in case you didn't know, none of the 'rendered' were NYU grads with non-Hispanic-white, native-born American, movie star, eight-month-pregnant wives like the guy in the flick.

Yes Virginia, There is an Anti-Family Conspiracy

is there anything more nefarious going on than denying public funds to discriminatory groups?

I guess they didn't teach you in your slave school that the destruction of the bourgeois family was a goal of the Left since its invention in the 19th century.

By eliminating traditional institutions that supply a separate source of independent strength, the Left hopes to convert the population to free-floating atomistic individuals ripe for collectivization in "loose coalitions of numerous distinct movements, including (but not limited to) feminists, greens, some labour unions, some atheists, some gay rights activists, and some minority ethnic and racially oriented civil rights groups".

The atomized are also increasingly dependent on public spending and public "direction"/regulation. If you doubt this, note the increase in government spending and regulation across the OECD nations.

Quite a burden.

Exiled Americans

In Gilmore vs Gonzales the lower courts have held that the right to travel doesn't mean the right to travel in a specific fashion.

I remember Trop v. Dulles, a 1950s case holding that denaturalization as a punishment was "cruel and unusual". In other words, you can be executed but not denaturalized. [Naturalized citizens can be denaturalized for fraud in procuring their citizenship.] One of the men in this article is native-born and the other is naturalized. Perhaps someone with Lexis can find that case.

Most of the action in this area has involved taxes and keeping people from leaving or forcing them to return to the US and not the other way around.

The government can keep you from leaving the country by getting a writ ne exeat republica. But that involves taxes or other monies owed.

Likewise, the Feds can yank passports for failure to pay child support, for tax debts, and other activities. This will make it hard to travel internationally. They have also done it to Americans living overseas in an attempt to force a return. [Foreigners generally can't live in a country with a National ID system without a passport.]

There was the Connecticut case of the kid who fled a rape charge to Europe and lived there for a while. His parents supported him. The state searched their house after a few years and found info about his travels. He had tried to get an Irish passport since he had an Irish grandparent. With his US passport expiring and Interpol on his tail, he went to Switzerland and surrendered.

"Illegal" Aliens

All of the immigration-related federal crimes that can be committed by aliens can also be committed by citizens.

Look in Title 18 for "evading inspection at the border".

Likewise uttering false documents (citizen presents someone else's passport for entry) (citizen unaccountably decides to apply for a visa to enter and lies on the application).

Being an illegal alien per se is not a crime (though the House recently tried to criminalize the status).

Lying to federal employees Title 18 Sec 1001 (the Martha Stewart crime.

Republishing from Volokh

Over the next few days, I'll be republishing some of my Volokh Conspiracy comments over the years. They won't all be easy to follow but I wanted to reposition and save them.

Right Wing Groups on Campus

SLS 1L:
CAP was an extremely repulsive group, and the American people have the right to know why Alito was bragging about his membership in it.

You should be aware that more Americans are repulsed by various left-wing groups I could name than right-wing groups (since more Americans self-identify as right than as left).

CAP was similar to hundreds of other campus-based conservative groups that used to exist and still exist. They were quite mainstream (among conservatives).

Now it's a normal "left-wing attack formation" to characterize right-wing groups in a particular fashion (racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe). Trust me, I can formulate similar right-wing attack formations against left-wing groups. I do it for recreational purposes from time to time.

What's important is for commies to realize deep in their non-existent souls that right wingers aren't going away (and indeed the disease seems to be spreading). Welcome to the club. We've had to put up with you for the last 160 years and you're just going to have to put up with us. We had to accept sodomy you're going to have to accept neo-traditionalism.

Animal Rights Attackers

six masked protesters reportedly disrupted a child's birthday party at the home of a University of California at Santa Cruz researcher and confronted her husband at the door, hitting him on the hand.

A few incidents ended with one of these should serve to cool the passions. I don't know why more persons who are known terrorist targets don't deploy same.

Home Schooling

a claimed right to control a third party -- however much the claimed rightsholder might generally love the third party, and however much that third party might need some control from someone -- strikes me as among the weakest sorts of claims for unenumerated rights.

Then certainly the coercive state apparatus' claim of a "right to control the 3rd party" would be even weaker since it manifestly cares not at all for the "3rd party" and is utterly incompetent in caring for "it". Note that death rates of children in government custody are much higher than death rates of children in parental custody and you can forget completely about their intellectual and spiritual development.

I don't worry too much about the Constitutional basis of home schooling. 30 years ago it was illegal in all states and today its legal in all states (with some regulation in some states). Legalization was accomplished by a combination of civil disobedience and legislation.

Mostly, school districts got tired of beating up on parents who were the least neglectful of their children (wanting, after all, to care for them 24/7 365) when the beating up didn't work since parents could merely switch school districts if they got tired of the harassment.

Also, since the 4th Amendment has been held to guarrantee that private homes are not subject to regulatory searches (Camara vs Municipal Ct 387 U.S. 523 (1967)), coercion proved difficult. If they can't enter the house, it's hard for the authorities to determine the existence of children without expending additional resources.

Then there's the fact that home schoolers used one of those clever legal arguments that is not supposed to work in real life - but sometimes does - by saying that, "We are not tutoring our children at home. They are attending a private school that happens to be in our home." This switched the argument from "neglect" to "private school regulation". And since religious schools and elite private schools had discouraged regulation of private schools in many states, home schoolers were able to benefit from that laxity.

And even when states like Nebraska tried to force private schools to use certified teachers they encountered civil disobedience. [When 1000 Baptist ministers descend upon you and a disabled Vietnam Vet who's become a minister cuts the padlock on the church door, even Nebraska had to yield.]

Since most home schoolers these days are members of religious organizations they also have access to resources both financial and physical to make life difficult for regulators. See, for example Dr. Dobson's daily broadcast tomorrow on the in re Rachel L case, In Defense of Home Schooling.

As with firearms regulation, strong views on the part of the regulated can pay off.

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Some years ago, my daughter was asked by a woman in a shop why she wasn't in school. She gave the answer I had previously suggested, half in jest. "My daddy doesn't believe in your schools. He says they're controlled by the communists." Further deponent sayeth not.