Yes and no from SCOTUS
SCOTUS says it will be hearing a case about mail-in ballots. This is potentially extremely important:
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Watson v. the Republican National Committee (RNC), which asks the Court to decide if ballots cast before Election Day by mail should be counted if they arrive after that date.
It’s not everything – I would love for mail-in ballots to be limited to actual absentee votes, and certainly not mailed out automatically to all voters. But this case deals with one of the more flagrant outrages involved with mail-in ballots – the idea that the counting can go on and on and on even with ballots received after the fact. This is a situation that increases the possibility of fraud.
In other SCOTUS news, the Court has declared it will not be hearing a case on gay marriage. It won’t be reviewing Obergefell, at least not any time soon:
The Supreme Court on Monday morning turned down a request from Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky, to reconsider its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In a brief, unsigned order, the justices rejected Davis’ petition for review of a ruling by a federal appeals court upholding an award of $100,000 to a gay couple to whom she had refused to issue a marriage license. That petition had also asked the justices to overrule the 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, arguing that a right to same-sex marriage “had no basis in the Constitution.”
As is generally the case when it denies petitions for review, the court did not provide any explanation for its decision not to hear Davis’ case.
I believe Obergefell was poorly reasoned in the legal sense, and yet I’m glad the Court won’t be reviewing it. Reversing it could possibly wreak havoc in terms of the millions of people who have relied on it to marry, and it would almost certainly have extremely negative political repercussions as well.
Me and my opposite sex partner have been together for 15 years, present ourselves as married, wear rings, but are not legally married. The main reason is the marriage tax penalty, which is less bad than it used to be at the federal level, but is pretty bad still in California. For some reason deductions and exclusions for married people are not 2X single, but a fraction of that. We can take a really nice vacation each year with the tax savings.
At any rate there has been no issue without being legal, including discounts at brokerage houses and the like where we put separately owned accounts as a “household”, which lots of business do. In fact, the main penalty has been health care, which allowed “domestic partners” to share a work health-plan until gay “marriage” was forced on the states by a handful of judges in black robes (tell me how we live in a “democracy”?).
They are still a long way from counting all the ballots for the Seattle mayoral election 6 days past Election Day and WA is an entirely mail in ballot state.
And of course the crazy socialist, never had a job, still being supported by her parents candidate has been gaining on the less crazy incumbent and will probably win after being 8 percentage points behind on election night.
It really is a WA tradition like no other. Happens every election.
It’s still stunning to me how many people can’t accept the legitimate difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting. My family and I were in West Germany for 5+ years in the 80’s and I think my dad had a pretty legitimate reason for not being able to show up to a polling place in his California county of official residence on Election Day. Therefore a signed, tracked, auditable absentee ballot was never in question.
Provided packages are in the mail by 15 September to those with a standing order for a postal ballot and provided signature checks are undertaken in daily batches as mailers return with the returned ballot packs then stored in locked cabinets, the law should have no compunction about declaring packets which arrive after a drop dead date (say, the day before the polls close to in-person voters) are not validly cast and must be locked away and later returned to the voter after the certification of results. Also to be locked away and returned to voters should be ballot packs which failed the signature check (bar those turned over to the sheriff’s department for further inquiry). Posted mail is embarrassingly slow, but you’d still have ample time. Allowing procrastinators an extra three days benefits few people.
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The following have an abiding impediment to voting in person: civilian employees of the government posted abroad and spouses in country with them, servicemen and spouses residing with them, persons under 25 enrolled at a residential campus, miscellaneous persons who are eligible but living in institutional group quarters, persons certified by their doctor as homebound, and persons certified by their work supervisor as being overnight outside the county for at least 50 days per year. In western states, you might add persons who live more than ten miles driving distance from the nearest polling station. These people should be eligible for a postal ballot on standing order, renewable quadrennially.
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If you’re actually concerned about queues, you should be pushing for moving election day to Saturday and expanding the number of precincts. Who is pushing for that?
Neo – do you have solid evidence that “millions” of gay people have gotten married? I highly doubt that many have married. Open relationships and high-volume promiscuity remain the norm in the gay subculture.
This was always a false issue – a wedge used to weaken and dilute the institution of marriage. Many gay activists said so openly, others said it was a distraction and a needless provocation of the Christian majority.
Then there were the earnest dreamers who thought changing the law would change the compulsive, self-destructive promiscuity that is the norm in the gay “community”. Worked out about as well as progressive experiments in legalizing drugs and prostitution….
Ben David:
You speak/write the truth. Thanks.
I disagree with Art Deco on “standing orders” for mailed ballots. People who cannot make it to a polling place should be required to mail a written request for a ballot for each election, with verification of their ID.
Interesting question on the numbers of LG couples who legally marry. We have two examples in our new neighborhood. The male couple introduce themselves as “partners.” The females claim the partner is a “wife.” It may be that lesbians are more likely to want marriage, emotionally, although there are several prominent examples of male couples who are legally married (Scott Bessent, for instance).
Ben — The fIrst nation to legalize homosexual marriage was The Netherlands, I believe. 12 – 15,000 unions in a country of 12 million. Perhaps this has changed during the last decade? But the numbers demonstrated no great demand for the service.
My charitable reading of the SCOTUS move is that the time to revisit the issue is not yet ripe. Furthermore, the case in question defends official non-compliance on First Amendment grounds. In other words, despite raising civil rights issues, it didn’t present itself on those grounds.
A ripe time to revalorize marriage and procreative marriage is coming. Undoubtedly .
My problem with Obergefel is that the key and defining truth that protecting offspring is the chief reason for marriage — which is a contract in the for of a convenient license.
Instead, both the decision and the public temper was lost in irrelevancies or empty slogans such as a “Love is love” — hence convenience wins!
My closest family member is gay. And he said back then that he had no need for it. But since he has three sisters with multiple children, he saw how his “self-interest” could be a disservice towards theirs.
In any case, disentangling necessity from convenience in family law I marriage has not been an area of interest at the state level. Not yet.
Another failure by Congress. Priests have no business actually certifying a marriage. The marriage should be a legal pre-nup between consenting adults. If people want a church acknowledgment of their union, go for it. This way, churches cannot be forced to acknowledge a union they don’t want to acknowledge.
Trans including homos socially distanced from sims is trendy. Couplet “=” couple. Feminine sims “=” female. Gender (e.g. sexual orientation) replaces sex. Fetus “=” baby. Jew “=” burden. There are diverse Diverse precedents. Oh, pedophilia is a sexual orientation is socially progressive, but not politically congruent (“=”), not yet. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #WhyNotToo
It’s a Pro-Choice, Pro-Choice, Pro-Choice religion.
Civil unions to incorporate a multiplicity of consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #Whatever
Civil unions lack the social cachet of marriage.
Refusing the rule on the validity of a law because it might wreak havoc is just another way of saying we have no Supreme Court.
Civil unions for liability and taxation purposes. Marriage to celebrate couples in union and unPlanned parenthood of our Posterity.
Once I thought gay marriage through, I realized that marriage is really about children and gay marriages rarely have any.
I thought the gay marriage debate should have included that aspect. Instead it was foisted on us as a purely civil rights issue. With the weepy rationale that it would help save gays from AIDS.
Then it became a bludgeon for legally harassing straight Christians who disagreed.
The problem with the ruling and social progression is not only its liberal (i.e. divergent) character, but its wallowing in selective, and inconsistent consideration. Why so Pro-Choice? Throw another baby on the barbie already. A wicked solution with politically congruent (“=”) support. There are diverse, Diverse precedents with victims and collateral damage.
All marriages are a gay affair. If not, then you’re doing it wrong. Perhaps next time hold the reception on the Isle of Lesbos and a transatlantic cruise over blue waters. #HateLovesAbortion
But never under a Rainbow, because albinophobia is a progressive psychosis with black roots.
huxley, male gay marriages sometimes have children, who are, in these days, usually the product of surrogate pregnancies — which is another morally-questionable procedure. Lesbian marriages more often have one partner get inseminated and actually bear the child, and then, as often happens, when the marriage breaks up there are acrimonious disputes about who’s the “real” mother.
Neither partnership in my new neighborhood includes children in the household, so that’s good, I think.
Kate:
I’ve been moving in gay circles since I was 20 when my first college commune was taken over by gay activists. I lived in San Francisco as a leftist for over 30 years. My sister is in a gay marriage which has lasted longer than most lesbian ones.
Children in gay marriages are rare and children are not what gay marriage is about.
huxley:
Here are some relevant statistics.
For what it’s worth – all the lesbian couples I know (four in total; two young, two older) have children. The younger ones have had biological children (of one spouse) within the lesbian marriage, and the older ones were originally married to men and they both have biological children from those earlier marriages. The male gay couples I know (only two come to mind) don’t have children.
Alan Colbo:
I did NOT say that’s why SCOTUS won’t be hearing the case. They gave no reason and I don’t know their reasons. It may be something about the technical legal issues in the case itself rather than anything about gay marriage.
I was giving my own reasons for being relieved they decided not to revisit it for now. It might be – if I knew their legal reasoning – that I would agree with their reasoning as well, or I might disagree. I simply don’t know the basis for their refusal and so I can’t speak to it.
I only know one former lesbian. She transitioned to male. Her lesbian wife was not happy and they have separated. My wife has known this person for about 50 years. My wife just can’t stop referring to her by her female name.
The married gay family member has no children and the unmarried gay is utterly destroying himself.
Priests have no business actually certifying a marriage.
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They’ve been doing so for centuries. Thanks for the ex cathedra. We all benefit.
I disagree with Art Deco on “standing orders” for mailed ballots. People who cannot make it to a polling place should be required to mail a written request for a ballot for each election, with verification of their ID.
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You publish the electoral roll twice a year – once at the end of March, once at the beginning of September. The former tells you who is eligible to vote in May and August and can affix a valid signature on petitions due in mid-July and the latter who can vote in November and affix a signature on petitions due at the end of January. Each roll remarks who will be sent a postal ballot and thus not voting in person (and to be turned away if they do appear).
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If the board of elections maintains hard copy buff cards, it will have signatures on file and can maintain thumbprints on file as well. You have the ballot pack placed in an envelope marked with a particular precinct placed in an envelope with the voter’s identifying information including signature and thumbprint. As the ballots return in the mail, each wrap can be checked against information on file. (In New York, they have precinct registers printed up each year from digital images taken of salient parts of the voter registration form.
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Your insistence on annual or semi-annual letters is a system designed for spot orders of ballots for any reason a voter might have. I don’t think spot orders are good policy. I’m only interested in accommodating people who have impediments which are not evanescent. Having people send in a letter every year is a waste of effort on both ends and complicates the task of assembling an electoral register in advance. The 94 year old homebound lady I look after isn’t going to be any more ambulatory next year than this. Other recipients may have situations which change; you can arrange for the postal services to return such mailers rather than forwarding them; their registration form can be placed in the inactive file and eventually discarded if they do not re-register or send a change-of-address card.
There are somewhat north of seven million persons over the age of 17 enmeshed in the gay subculture at any one time. Per the Census Bureau. about two million in 2021 were paired off in a domestic situation, legally ratified or no.
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What gay groups have been insisting on is that their affiliations merit a recognition that other human associations do not. They should have been told to get stuffed.
It wasn’t the camel’s nose that got into the tent.
And of course once in the tent that was a contented camel.
huxley, there are now people arguing that homosexuals should get accelerated access to tax-funded child-manufacturing, because children are an essential part of marriage.
Aaaaannnd in all the discussions – data or anecdotal – of gay marriage, we have to keep in mind the well-established “open” nature of these “marriages. Confirmed by study after study.
Also confirmed is the enormous danger these artificially created families are to the children who must live in them. Well established that the number 1 risk factor for physical or sexual abuse of children is the presence of an adult who is not the child’s biological parent… a situation that is guaranteed by the revolving-door “friends with benefits” norm in these “marriages”.
Yep – like most things the Left peddles to us by playing on our emotions, this was never intended to be “compassionate” – not to those who are damaged by molestation presented as “mentoring, not to those induced into the lifestyle, not to the innocent kids caught in these homes.
It was intended to confuse and blur the average person’s ideas of what “family” and “morality” mean.
@ Ben David > “It was intended to confuse and blur the average person’s ideas of what “family” and “morality” mean.”
Indeed.
I add to your observations that even before Obergefell, there were government-forced shutdowns of adoption agencies which did not want to release children to homosexual couples (sometimes but not always “married” in the relevant state, back in the days of domestic partnerships and civil unions).
Some of the news stories about the abuse of adopted children, mostly by male couples but sometimes with female perps or pimps, are horrific.
Some other points, related to but not directly addressing comments in the thread:
Back when same-sex marriage was most hotly debated, on one blog I followed a “gay” commenter kept repeating “If you don’t like gay marriages, don’t get one.”
(They aren’t very happy and cheerful, and I still have a gripe about the debasing of a perfectly delightful word in the service of their sexual narcissism).
He was honest enough to apologize (though not as direct as huxley) when it became clear that “his side” was not interested in “just being left alone,” but in forcing everyone to accept, and then celebrate, and then facilitate, their unions.
(Coincidentally, I had my evening milk in my Masterpiece Cakeshop mug today. “Yeah…that cakeshop” it says. The other side of it quotes Eph. 2:10 NLT.)
(And what about that judge in California, who struck down a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as strictly heterosexual, despite its electoral confirmation of the majority viewpoint even in CA, then waited until he retired less than 2 years later to admit he was in a homosexual partnership of 10 years duration. –Wikipedia)
A final point, especially relating to the connection of male-female marriages and raising children; not just procreation, natural or manufactured (h/t Kate), but nurturing as well.
In 1995, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a proclamation expounding our long-standing beliefs and doctrines about that subject. We all went around scratching our heads about why they felt prompted to belabor something so obvious, and orthodox in almost all societies and religious systems for 99% of human history.
Well, we found out, didn’t we.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng
On the ballot issue (rather than the issue on the ballot), Stephen Kruiser is somewhat hopeful, but the interesting point is his personal anecdote.
https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2025/11/10/the-morning-briefing-will-scotus-bring-a-modicum-of-sanity-to-mail-in-ballot-madness-n4945823
“For the last six years that I lived in California, I was on the permanent vote-by-mail list, a list that I never once opted in on. Every election, I would fill out a provisional ballot, and request to be taken off of the vote-by-mail list, which never happened. After I had been back in Arizona for a few years, I checked and I was still registered in California and on the list.
The topper there is that my old mailbox in LA wasn’t secure.
We’re supposed to believe that nothing can go wrong in the above scenario. ”
Yeah, no.
procreative marriage – So those marriages between a Biological Male and a Biological Woman that don’t produce children are not real marriages?? We were married 57 years, no kids, not by choice but just how things are Were we not in a real Marriage?
It could be a simple rejection of Kim Davis’s attempt via appeal to reverse the consequences of her refusal to do her job. Regardless of what you think of gay marriage, Davis was wrong to refuse to do her job based on her personal religious beliefs. The only acceptable thing for her to do was to resign.
What Mr. Kruiser is describing is officials ignoring statutory provisions or statutory provisions and regulations which make no provision for maintenance of the voter roll.
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The staff of a county board of elections should be made up of people who have passed a screening examination, no exceptions. The Republican county chairman appoints one commissioner and the Democratic county chairman the other. They must be in agreement to act. Half the employees are on the patronage of the Republican commissioner and half the Democratic commissioner. All operations of note require a clerk from each side working in tandem.
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Ideally, you have a flow check of voter registration forms arriving by a series of databases. One would be the extant database, to see if the voter is already listed at some address. One would be a gazetteer to check the street address. One would be a municipal register of properties without residential uses. One would be a register of death certificates maintained by the Secretary of State. One would be a register of civil commitment orders and guardianships compiled by the Secretary of State. One would be a census of inmates in prisons and jails maintained by the commissioner of corrections. One would be a register from the state revenue department of those who had in the last two calendar years filed a state tax return and the address from which they filed it. They would not have to have paid any taxes, they would merely have had to file a return. You can have a line on voter registration forms and state tax returns asking the filer if they are a citizen and asked to state the date of their naturalization if any. You want your address to appear in the gazeteer. You do not want to appear in most of these databases, or your registration effort fails. You don’t want mismatches between information on the voter registration form and that in the state revenue department’s database. If you’re not in that database but you say you’ve occupied your current residence since May 2023, there’s an impediment.
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Also ideally, you have a stock check of every card in the file at least biennially, again checking the same set of databases. Different letters in the alphabet are checked in a given bloc of time during the biennium. And some are removed to the inactive file and taken off the computer-generated roll once cards of notification have been mailed out to those so removed. You publish the roll at the end of March (indicating who is eligible to vote ‘ere September and sign petitions ‘ere September). You publish the roll as amended at the beginning of March, indicating who is eligible to vote ‘ere the following March and sign designating petitions ‘ere that date. You should not have relict entries hanging around for more than two years. As for the list of those due a postal ballot, names should drop off automatically every four years absent the receipt of a signed postcard from the voter.
Couple of years ago, a woman did a check of East Lansing (MI) voter rolls. Not a big deal. A number of middle-aged women registered at a fraternity house what was closed due to Covid. A number listed addresses in a park without homes.. Others in an apartment complex which had been around for years but recently torn down.
She was reproached for supporting election deniers.
Turns out Chester County purged all of its registered independents, to the number of 75k. When finding themselves unregistered at the polling place, they were sent to the one location available for such problems to fill out a provisional ballot. Which ran out.
Lots of problems and contending that mail-ins are absolutely immune to such issues is silly. It’s insulting to say such things, presuming the listener is dumb enough to believe them.
SHIREHOME, nobody, whether religious or secular conservatives, says that a marriage is not a marriage if it doesn’t produce children. I have several friends, married and childless, who have been excellent examples of committed marital devotion over the course of decades, as I’m sure your marriage was also. Just as devoted couples with children do, they serve their communities as icons of what marriage should be.
Scotus is usually about trying not to cause a ruckus. Roberts supposedly was scarred by the Bush V Gore hanging chads that blamed Scotus for the decision.
Cowards always have an excuse.
@ Shirehome > What Kate said.