In any heterosexual relationship, if a person falls in love with someone from a different country and not a citizen, then they can get married and share their lives together in America. In a gay family, that family is torn apart, while their kids get to watch their mother handcuffed and thrown in the paddy like some kind of criminal.
This is horrifying, but it’s something thousands of people are trying to deal with in a America where DOMA ruins families every day.
Please share widely!
christopher says
Even if people wanted to protect one state from having to recognize a marriage in another state, shouldn’t the “It’s always been up to the states” crowd follow this to its logical conclusion? In other words, since MA does recognize SSM an immigrant marrying a citizen should hold up just as much whether straight or gay if the union is solemnized in MA.
kbusch says
Passed as part of a package of compromises in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act required the federal government to aid in the recapture of slaveholders’ “property” and it obligated citizens to cooperate in this as well. The southern states, who had been whining for years about states’ rights, including nullifier-in-chief J.C.Calhoun, made the North’s willingness to carry out the letter of this act a key litmus test of their willingness to remain in the Union. Anti-slavery northerners were shocked at the obvious hypocrisy of states’ rights advocates insisting on a law whose encroachments on state governance seemed unconstitutional.
christopher says
this act was merely enforcing a Constitutional provision – Article IV, Section ii, paragraph 3:
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p>”No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
regularjoe says
to me, at least, is that so few senators attended this heart rending hearing. I hope things work out for that family.