Legal Importance of the Iowa Gay Marriage Decision

This blog post on the Iowa gay marriage decision is useful because of the legal background in it. Here's the critical part:

"What sets the Iowa opinion apart is a passage near the end. After dealing with the arguments the state offered to justify the exclusion of same-sex couples, the Iowa Supreme Court addresses head-on what it says is the “unspoken” reason many support the exclusion: religious opposition.

The Court says that while many oppose marriage for religious reasons, religion cannot justify a law excluding gay people from marriage. “State government can have no religious views,” the opinion says, “either directly or indirectly expressed through its legislation.” “This proposition,” the Court goes on to say, “is the essence of the separation of church and state.”

Exactly.

Kristof's Column on Rape

Nicholas Kristof has a thought-provoking article on rape kits and how often they go untested. He questions why, and wonders if it is because rape is not considered a serious crime.

Sexual violence is heart-breaking, and so very prevalent. At one time, I realized that every woman I talked to about the topic had either been raped or sexually abused. Maybe I just had a small circle of friends, but that fact startled and depressed me.

Kristof mentions that New York has been the one shining example in this, that in the last ten years they've been consistently testing rape kits and had great success in matching DNA. This is interesting, because for part of this time the Assistant District Attorney for Sex Crimes in New York was Linda Fairstein. She has also written a successful mystery series in which her main character, Alexandra Cooper, has the same job, and lots of the minor stories are drawn from Fairstein's experience as ADA.

I have had one personal experience with sexual violence... in 1989 a friend of mine, a 21 year old woman who was beautiful both inside and out, was murdered here in Atlanta. Years later they tested the DNA and matched it to a man who was already in prison for another crime. She has justice now, but it can never replace what the world lost in her.

Lily Ledbetter

Good article on Lily Ledbetter, the woman whose case the Supreme Court made such a mess of. She's worked hard all of her life, and has the courage to stand up for equal pay for equal work. Another hero.

Quote of the Day 4/30/2009

I've been compiling quotations that I really like for years. I used to have them up when I had a web page. So I thought maybe I'll start posting one of them a day.

Here is today's favorite quote:

"When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment."
- Scout Cloud Lee

Troy Davis

If this country doesn't torture, I would hope that it also doesn't execute people when there is a real chance the prisoner may be innocent. I don't know if Troy Davis is innocent or not, but I do know 7 of 9 witnesses have recanted their testimony, and that eyewitness testimony is being looked at more and more skeptically. Davis has appealed about as far as he can go, and they have failed, I think mostly on technical reasons.

I'm opposed to the death penalty, anyway, because those sentenced are mostly poor and black, leading one to doubt the justice of it. And, simply, there have been so many people exonerated by DNA evidence that we risk executing the innocent, and that's intolerable.

U.S. Treaty Obligations on Torture Prosecutions

This post from Glenn Greenwald (he follows the torture story very well) is a transcript of an interview he had with Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, on the obligations the U.S. has under various treaties to try those who approved torture techniques. Worth reading.

Drug Sentencing Disparities

I like this blog post because it explains the history behind the huge sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. I echo the call for ending same. Obama is apparently planning to act on this.