Today Texas banned marriage.
As part of a slate of constitutional amdendments, the people of Texas added to the state constitution:
Quote:
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# This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.
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Not only have they banned marriage, they have banned all legal statuses similar to marriage!
No longer will the people of Texas be in danger of being trapped by a marriage.
The only way to be safe was to nuke marriage from orbit.
Seriously, this looks to me like the perils of having legislation by masses. The wording of the constitution amendment wasn't what those who voted for it wanted -- I seriously doubt that 74% of the Texan population wanted marriage to be banned.
Should courts pay attention to the intention of those who voted? To the intention of those who wrote the proposition? To the marketing used to push to proposition into the texan constitution? Or should they look at the proposition as a piece of text that means nothing more, and nothing less, than what it says?
(I'm not here to discuss gay marriage or not to gay marriage. I'm interested in the wording problems of the proposition that was passed. The full text of the proposition follows:
# Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
# This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.
As an aside, most of the other gay-marriage banning amendments had much much better wording that successfully avoided saying "marriage itself is banned".)