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Originally Posted by sapiens
Do you think that the change to the state constitution will actually have this effect? I don't.
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I cannot think of any other fair way to deal with the interpritation of a constitutional amendment.
If the wording is explicit, you follow the wording. Only if the wording is at all ambiguous and doesn't cover explicitly should they fall back and look at "intention".
For example, the non-explicitly enumerated rights in the US constitution (which are mentioned) are explicitly reserved for either the states or the people. For which they are reserved for is something a court could look for the intention of the authors.
However, someone who walks into the voting booth with nothing other than a firm grasp of the english language should have some hope of understanding what they are voting on. This change quite explicitly states that the state of texas will not legally recognize anything identical to marriage. There are no fancy lawyer wordings going on -- it says it in plain english. The courts should respect the wishes of the 74% of Texans who said "yes" to this, and give them exactly what they asked for.
Anything else is applying a judicial veto to the actual
content of the constitution. Judges can overrule laws based off the constitution, but giving judges the right to say "this part of the constitution is dumb, we will ignore it" is blatantly overstepping the power of a Judge.
The people have spoken. If they didn't mean what they said, it is up to them to correct it, not up to judges to second guess them.