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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / And While We’re On The Subject Of Idiot Governors And Gay Rights

And While We’re On The Subject Of Idiot Governors And Gay Rights

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It’s easy for me to laugh at Indiana Pence and the Backlash of Doom when next door here in Kentucky we have Dinosaur Steve Beshear finding a way to make the guy look like a genius.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear says the state’s ban on gay marriage should be upheld in part because it is not discriminatory in that both gay and straight people are barred from marrying people of the same gender.

In an argument labeled absurd by gay marriage advocates, Beshear’s lawyer says in a brief filed last week at the U.S. Supreme Court that “men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex” under Kentucky law, making the law non-discriminatory.

The argument mirrors that offered by the state of Virginia nearly 50 years ago when it defended laws barring interracial marriage there and in 15 other states, including Kentucky, by saying they weren’t discriminatory because whites were barred from marrying blacks just as blacks were barred from marrying whites.

The Supreme Court in 1967 rejected that argument in the historic case of Loving v. Virginia, in which Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, were charged with a crime for marrying.

Beshear has done a lot for Kentucky, overseeing Kynect, arguably the most successful state insurance exchange under the ACA, expanding Medicare, and improving education out of the “close in state rankings to Mississippi” range.

But on LGBTQ rights, the guy lives up to his nickname, and I can’t frankly wait for current Attorney General Jack Conway to replace him in elections this November.

Unless, you know, the Republican who wants to kick 400,000 people off Medicare wins.

Reader Interactions

68Comments

  1. 1.

    Linda Featheringill

    And both the rich and the poor are prohibited from sleeping under bridges.

    Asshole.

  2. 2.

    Bubblegum Tate

    Oh, Jebus. “There is no ban on gay marriage! Gay people are already allowed to get married–to the opposite-gender person of their choice!” was dumb as fuck even in its original form of a wingnut blog comment.

  3. 3.

    eyelessgame

    Not only that, laws against abortion aren’t a violation of women’s rights, because both men and women are equally barred from having abortions.

  4. 4.

    EconWatcher

    “The law, in its majesty, forbids both the rich man and the poor man from living under a bridge.” J.J. Rouseau

    ETA: I got beaten on the draw

  5. 5.

    Karen in GA

    It reminds me of an eight year old who doesn’t want to go to school and decides that since he’s there against his will, he’s been kidnapped. “See? It’s illegal to make me go to school!” Or the kids whose teachers take away things the kids aren’t supposed to have in class, and the kids accuse the teachers of stealing.

    We’re up against pouting, whiny children.

  7. 7.

    Snarkworth

    “expanding Medicare..” I think it’s Medicaid.

    /retired copy editor with too much time on her hands

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    That is such a lame argument to advance in a courtroom that it almost seems to me like they are tanking the defense of the law.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    it is not discriminatory in that both gay and straight people are barred from marrying people of the same gender.

    I LOLed. This guy must be the reincarnation of Rufus T. Firefly.

  10. 10.

    Hal

    Gay people can get married. It’s just that they have to marry people of the opposite sex. Problem solved!

  11. 11.

    Bobby B.

    You southerners have all the cool villain-governers. Here in Oregon we’re stuck with boring old Kate Brown.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    @Karen in GA:

    It reminds me of an eight year old who doesn’t want to go to school and decides that since he’s there against his will, he’s been kidnapped.

    Wait. I thought that was the libertarian argument.

  13. 13.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Beshear’s lawyer, Leigh Gross Latherow, of Ashland, did not respond to a request for comment.

    and was considering a new job as a sewage plant supervisor because at least she’d get to wear gloves.

    Defending their argument, Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, said that same-sex couples are not “similarly situated” by biology or history to opposite-sex couples and thus aren’t entitled to equal protection under the law as it has been defined in Supreme Court decisions.

    Liberty University? Really? That’s not exactly similarly situated to higher educational establishments.

  14. 14.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Hal:

    Gay people can get married. It’s just that they have to marry people of the opposite sex. Problem solved!

    ISTR a funny video made by some gay men saying “really, straight homophobes? You want to force us to marry women? Okay, good luck competing with us.”

  18. 18.

    EconWatcher

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    I would like to see that. I always tell my wife that men who are better looking than me are probably gay. Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s buying it.

  19. 19.

    Ruviana

    OT and I know it’s not much but yesterday some people wondered about how to help Shanna Tippen. There’s a petition to reinstate her here. There’s been a lot of coverage of the story so if I see any other things I’ll post them.

  22. 22.

    Punchy

    She also argues that gays don’t deserve the same level of protection afforded to blacks and other minorities because they have proved they have enough political clout to win safeguards from state legislatures and at the ballot box.

    What the fuck is this even supposed to mean? AAs have won tremendous safeguards in the past 50 years….they’ve voted in many elections, even voting in one of their own. So how the fuck does one argue that they still need “protection” but gays, currently being actively discriminated against in 1 and soon to be 2 states, have won similar “safeguards”?

    I’m with the others upthread who think that this is Beshear’s way of tanking the defense of the law. The arguments are so stupid, so over-the-top fake, and so easily disproven that I think he’s trying to lose this case. If not…..wow, did they hire the worst lawyers ever.

  23. 23.

    Hawes

    I get it. But all you are going to get from Southern Democrats is some occasional good economic positions. They are NOT ever going to have our backs on cultural issues.

    Put another way, as big a Douchecanoe as Mark Pryor was, how much more preferable was he to Tom Cotton?

    Heck, the “straight people can’t marry the same sex either” argument is so dumb and pro forma it’s like he doesn’t care if he loses. And my guess is he doesn’t care.

    But he has to bow before the rubes who control that state.

    We all liked Alison Grimes.

    How’d that work out?

  24. 24.

    delk

    …and NASCAR just stepped into the Indiana party!

    They are disappointed and will not participate with exclusion or intolerance.

  26. 26.

    jibeaux

    So yesterday Trevor Noah was the bomb and now he’s bad…
    I dunno, the twitter jokes are not funny and they punch down in an uncomfortable way. At the same time, he was, what, 23 when he made most of them and I’m willing to cut him a little slack. I would be very disappointed if he brought any of that to TDS, but I think he still deserves a shot at it.

    Oh, and very good work on the Indiana Pence and the backlash of doom part.

  28. 28.

    jibeaux

    In NC, since they haven’t figured out how to gerrymander the governorship yet, he’s currently in “tack back to center re-election mode” and is saying sensible things on various anti-gay bills and other meddlesome horribleness that the legislature is up to and saying he won’t sign them.
    He’s not saying he’ll veto them, of course, because he’s a slimy-ass fuckweasel.

  29. 29.

    scav

    @delk: Not NASCAR, oh the screaming if so . . NASCAR was to remain inviolate, exceptionally pure and sanctified above apple pie, mother and all.

  31. 31.

    kindness

    When I was a kid growing up in the North East, Republicans were cerebral and moderate and not crazy for the most part. Yea there was the Goldwater/John Birch Society types but they were considered crazy by most other Republicans. Now days, not so much. Republicans now seem to relish the mantra of

    Be Evil! It’s what we do.

    Now if only the boot-licking MSM would admit it.

  32. 32.

    NonyNony

    @Punchy:

    The arguments are so stupid, so over-the-top fake, and so easily disproven that I think he’s trying to lose this case. If not…..wow, did they hire the worst lawyers ever.

    You can blame the lawyers, I suppose.

    I, however, suspect that the lawyers are actually mounting the best possible defense of marriage discrimination laws that can be mounted.

    If the law is indefensible – and it is – then any defense is going to be pathetic and ridiculous. If there were a good argument in favor of marriage discrimination laws someone would have made it. The fact that the best they’re able to offer is so terrible is an indication of just how indefensible the law is.

  33. 33.

    Craig

    My favorite addendum to the “gays can marry people of the opposite sex, so they already have equal rights” line is the argument that by wanting gay marriage, gays are asking for “extra” rights. Hey dummies, if you legalize gay marriage, then straight people can marry someone of the same sex. Still equal!

  35. 35.

    gbear

    That’s not a new argument. Decades ago I can remember the argument being made that both staight and gay people have the right to get married as long as they marry someone from the opposite sex. No discrimination at all! They really thought this was a bullet-proof argument, 100%.

  36. 36.

    Kyle

    Who can know, but from the very beginning of KY’s gay marriage case, the state’s arguments have been laughably bad, so much so that I and others assumed he was simply a Dem governor in a REP state that was trying to arrange for gay marriage without being held responsible for it. That is, he wasn’t trying to win. This was openly discussed on the intertubes during the trial of the case.

  37. 37.

    Face

    @delk: I’m sure they’ll still race there on Memorial Day weekend, however.

    ETA: I just realized that NASCAR isn’t Indy Car, so my bad. Diff orgs. But NASCAR will race there nonetheless regardless.

    I love these companies/orgs that publically denounce the law, but when given the opp to actually inflict a modicum of financial pain by ditching conferences or moving sporting events, just shrug. That’s using a stick….with no actual stick. But I bet they made Pence mad, so there’s that! Or not.

  38. 38.

    Belafon

    @kindness: The kind of people Elizabeth Warren would vote for:

    Warren voted as a Republican for many years saying, “I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets”.[17] She states that in 1995 she began to vote Democratic because she no longer believed that to be true, but she says that she has voted for both parties because she believed that neither party should dominate.[28]

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Beshear is pretty obviously tossing a bone to the rabid dogs that are the Christianists, while in the meantime pushing Obamacare (under a different name, natch) down their throats.

    Don’t have to like it, but it’s part of the political game you have to play in a state where the majority of the actual voters just don’t like the blah in the White House.

  41. 41.

    Botsplainer

    @Hawes:

    Heck, the “straight people can’t marry the same sex either” argument is so dumb and pro forma it’s like he doesn’t care if he loses. And my guess is he doesn’t care.

    But he has to bow before the rubes who control that state.

    This. My understanding is that he handed this one off – it doesn’t negatively impact Team Democrat, and he doesn’t really give a shit if it goes down.

    His big concern is a GOP wave in Kentucky – it would mean everything from stripping a lot of Louisville’s home rule power (including fairness and economic development stuff that is truly progressive) to congressional re districting that would dilute Louisville voters even further.

    THIS is Kentucky’s economic engine; we’re supporting a bunch of assholes who mock and despise us, supply funds for officials and courthouses and roads and bridges while getting spit in return. The GOP takes over and this local economy will collapse to something that is positively Kansan.

  42. 42.

    jonas

    @Face: Sometimes organizations are locked into venues with long-term contracts that would be financially devastating for them to break, so even if they want to leave, they can’t. Not always the case, but a lot of the time.

  44. 44.

    jl

    @Belafon: I was thinking about the last time there was a prominent Republican in a national or statewide race who was not a total fool or a tool, or both. Maybe Bobdole? He was behind the Americans with Disabilities Act.

    My attitude towards the GOP began to change to thoughts that only proper course was complete political destruction during late stages of GH Bush’s term, when I started wondering what the difference was, really, between Bush I and a white collar criminal. Been downhill from there.

    Related to the Indiana and Kentucky messes on LGBT rights, a post on a meta-analysis of studies on the economic effects of discrimination against various minority groups. It is real and it has real, and bad consequences.

    ‘Illegal Discrimination Still Significant and Persistent’
    Economists View blog
    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/03/illegal-discrimination-still-significant-and-persistent.html

  45. 45.

    Greg

    Zandar, I like reading your KY posts. I lived in Lexington then in Louisville for 5 years, and I would live there again given the chance. I found the politics to be fascinating. I was president of our neighborhood association in Louisville, so I was quite involved in the city’s politics, and I worked at the LEO (back before it became what it is now) and also worked on Yarmuth’s campaign.

  46. 46.

    Face

    @jonas: I realize that. What if Apple decided to close all of their retail stores in the state until this is repealed? They’re literally swimming in cash and the blip on the sales radar would be swamped by the positive press they’d recieve from such a step. I dont know if those stores are franchises or company-owned.

  47. 47.

    jonas

    Olsen and Boies so demolished these and all the other anti-SSM arguments in the Prop 8 trials in California, it’s hard to conceive of any remotely competent lawyer in the US ever using them again. And when I mean demolished, I mean showed them to be so specious that the witnesses for the defense basically had to admit on the stand that they were full of shit.

    The state lawyers have to be trying to not try to actually defend the law.

  48. 48.

    Cervantes

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Nor does it look better in context:

    The Petitioners state that since Kentucky’s marriage laws do not allow for the licensing and/or recognition of same-sex marriage, those laws are “necessarily” discriminating against same-sex couples on the basis of their sexual orientation and that because of that alleged discrimination, they belong to a classification requiring the application of heightened scrutiny. Pet. Br. 32. The Petitioners fail to address the fact that Kentucky’s marriage laws are not facially discriminatory to gays and lesbians based upon their sexual orientation. Kentucky’s marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals the same and are facially neutral. Men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are free to marry persons of the opposite sex under Kentucky law, and men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex under Kentucky law. See Dean v. D.C., 653 A.2d 307, 363 n. 1 (D.C. 1995) (Steadman, J., concurring) (citing Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 51 n. 11 (Haw. 1993), reconsideration granted in part, 875 P.2d 225 (1993) (“[N]ot all opposite-sex marriages are between heterosexuals, not all same-sex marriages would necessarily be between homosexuals.”).

    That’s from the Respondent’s brief. I won’t embarrass the counsel of record here by naming her, but her name is Leigh Latherow and she works for the law firm of VanAntwerp Monge.

    In a previous brief, she signed off on the argument that the government had a compelling interest in preventing gay marriage in order to protect the state’s economy by keeping its birth rate up.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Cervantes:

    In a previous brief, she signed off on the argument that the government had a compelling interest in preventing gay marriage in order to protect the state’s economy by keeping its birth rate up.

    My forehead! My desk! My forehead! My desk!

  50. 50.

    SRW1

    Are these guys and girls that stupid?

    Do they think people are that stupid?

    Is fundamentalist fervor causing cognitive dissonance of the contagious sort?

  52. 52.

    EthylEster

    A question: I see that LGBT is slowing morphing into LGBTQ, which I first heard in Seattle more than 15 years ago.
    But today I saw an instance of LGBTQI.
    So…inquiring minds want to know….what does the ‘I’ stand for?

  53. 53.

    boatboy_srq

    @Cervantes: …and here I thought she worked for Dewey Cheatham & Howe.

    I for one would love to see a few heteros who would be interested in SSM for themselves – just to see the wingnuts’ heads explode.

  57. 57.

    Southern Beale

    Tennessee’s attorney general has been making the ludicrous argument about procreation in our state’s SCOTUS brief.

    I have a feeling that Beshear’s lawyer, like the Tennessee AG, is making a lightweight argument because their hearts just aren’t in it. Or maybe they’re trolling the Republicans in the state legislature. “I don’t want to be part of this lawsuit but I have to because I’m beholden to idiots in the legislature so here’s a half-assed argument that makes us look like fools.”

  58. 58.

    Zandar

    There is the distinct argument that Beshear is puking up a completely unconstitutional argument in order to lose the fight on purpose, as Kentucky (along with Tennessee, Ohio and Michigan) is in the 5th circuit where SCOTUS is expected to hear arguments from in April.

    The idea is that the argument is so amazingly stupid that even Scalia will go “OK, yeah, this is bullshit” and then yay same-sex marriage for everyone.

  61. 61.

    delk

    @Face: If it gets some fans to think that maybe, just maybe, this gay thing they keep hearing about is a bad thing, I welcome it.

  63. 63.

    Steve in the ATL

    @pseudonymous in nc: Got a resume once from Liberty University JD. He had graduated a couple of years before and had never gotten a lawyer job. Yeah, I didn’t hire him
    either.

  66. 66.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    @kindness:
    Considering that Goldwater was pro gay rights and distrusted the religious right, he would be to the left of most of the culture warriors.

  67. 67.

    PhoenixRising

    These are the jokes, folks. Serious people making serious arguments against marriage equality, based in legal principles, are like unicorns.

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