The Patient Scholar

Checking the facts

Campaigns are rife with hyperbolic rhetoric and an occaisonal arms’-length relationship with the truth. Two excellent resources to check up on questions of national scope:

• FactCheck.org
• The Campaign Desk

Full faith and credit clause, Defense of Marriage Act, and the Utah Constitution

I have often maintained that the proposed constitutional amendment in Utah, as well as the national Defense of Marriage Act could be challenged on constitutional grounds under the full faith and credit clause in Article IV. There is an exception to the full faith and credit clause of which I was unaware.

There is a “public policy” exception, wherein the courts will give deference to the public policy of one state when it conflicts with that of another state, and a litigant wishes the public policy of the other state to be recognized. This exception has been applied in other cases involving marriage (for example for polygamy). (see Full faith and credit clause at Wikipedia.org.)

Nevertheless, the Court has changed course before, and the notion of a non-political Court is, whether for good or ill, an illusion at best. The Court pays close attention to the people and the people’s will, and it may only be a matter of time before the people’s will is such that a change in the public policy exception occurs, at least in the case of gay marriage. In gay marriage, there is no clearly vulnerable population at risk, as there is in polygamy. Nor is there a clear public policy issue as there is in the case of consanguinity. The public policy exception won’t carry as much weight in such a situation.

Another constitutional challenge may exist. Some churches are allowing the celebration of same-sex unions. For example, the Episcopal Diocese of Utah has announced plans to allow priests to bless gay unions (see Utah Episcopalians Bless Same-Sex Unions). As churches begin to recognize and allow same-sex unions, the issue becomes one of religious freedom, pitting the First Amendment and the full faith and credit clause against the public policy exception.

Appointed or elected?

From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (trans. by Gerth and Mills. Oxford University Press, 1958.)

“Once firmly organized, the parties can turn a formally free election into the mere acclamation of a candidate designated by the party chief.”

I cannot help but think of the 2004 gubernatorial election in Utah where a popular candidate, faithful to the party, was turned out on her ear by a “firmly organized,” patriarchal party.