HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

In New Mexico, sodomatrimony has not (yet) been inflicted on the state by legislation or referendum.  Nevertheless, in two New Mexico counties, judges – pretending to see an “equal rights violation” in not issuing licenses to sodomites purporting to permit them to “marry” one another – have just decreed that county clerks must issue licenses permitting these obscene parodies of marriage to proceed.  We’ll see if New Mexicans take any state-level action through their legislature to reverse these judges’ mischief.

New Mexico’s Republican – and Catholic – governor, Susana Martinez, has already said she plans to do nothing to challenge this.  The state’s Democratic – and Baptist – attorney general, Gary King, has said the same.  King plans to challenge Martinez for the governor’s mansion instead.  So New Mexicans for Normal Life are without allies at the statewide level of both major parties.  Martinez even trotted out that oh-so-stale line so beloved of Catholic politicians looking for an excuse to defy the Church’s teaching: “personally opposed, but…”

This has happened before in New Mexico, when in 2004 Victoria Dunlap, the Republican clerk of Sandoval County (just west of Santa Fe), unilaterally issued sodomatrimony licenses, excited by the spectacle of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “marrying” homosexuals in open defiance of California law.  To her credit, New Mexico’s then-attorney general, Patricia Madrid, shut down Dunlap’s illegal farce the same day.  In the intervening nine years, the quality of New Mexico elected officials must have declined – no surprise in a state that has given America such political prizes as Bill Richardson and Jeff Bingaman.

In 2013 the two counties subject to judicial fiat are Bernalillo and Santa Fe.  In a third, Doña Ana, the county clerk just began issuing sodomatrimony licenses without waiting to be ordered by a judge.

Doña Ana County has Las Cruces as its county seat.  The county clerk is Lynn Ellins, an oldish-white-guy looking transplant from liberal Colorado.  Ellins’ sidekick is Mario O. Jimenez III, which is more what I would expect in today’s New Mexico.

Bernalillo County is home to Albuquerque, so no doubt has a lot of University of New Mexico faculty and students, other “lifestyle progressives,” and liberal-voting Mexicans, so perhaps the judge’s action in Bernalillo is not so surprising.

Santa Fe County is, of course, home to state capital Santa Fe, which has drawn loopy liberals for decades and is also full of state employees and liberal-voting Mexicans, as well as Los Alamos, a colony of federal civil servants.  Maybe this idiocy should be even less a surprise in Santa Fe County than in Bernalillo.  But Doña Ana I don’t get, unless Clerk Ellins is simply a rogue liberal with utter contempt for New Mexico’s laws.  Perhaps he is of the Pink Persuasion himself, and fancies a nice wedding in the sunset of his years…

Whatever the reasons, these judicial and clerical usurpations are a disgrace, as is the fact that neither the state’s governor nor its chief law enforcement officer can be bothered to defend the rule of law in New Mexico.  Is there a procedure to impeach the governor and attorney general in New Mexico?  Are there any New Mexicans willing to use it?

The Bernalillo County judge, Alan Malott, a personal injury lawyer appointed by Gov. Bill Richardson in 2009, in surrendering preemptively to the ACLU and the “National Center for Lesbian Rights” (just what are “lesbian rights,” exactly?) wrote the usual tired nonsense Leftist judges invoke when sweeping away settled law to impose sodomatrimony on an unwilling citizenry:

Gay and lesbian citizens of New Mexico have endured a long history of discrimination. Denial of the right to marry continues this unfortunate, intolerable pattern and establishes irreparable injury on plaintiffs’ part.

That, of course, is complete hogwash.  The marriage laws of New Mexico, as of every other jurisdiction in the civilized world until very recently, offered all citizens the same right with respect to marriage: one man and one woman may be married to each other, provided that each is of age and both are capable of consent.

But because of their lamentably disordered urges that they decline to restrain, that right is uncongenial to homosexuals seeking to sacralize sodomitical couplings (and score government bennies).  So the homosexualists cry “discrimination” and demand that the most basic and most important social institutions of all, marriage and the families real marriages create and shelter, be pulled legally down to the level of the sterile travesties of human relationships sodomites prefer.  It’s a dismaying reflection on America that they always find some tool of a judge to impose their will.

I had thought, both from its Spanish ancestry and personal observation, that New Mexico was one of America’s more traditionally Catholic states – by heritage probably the most Catholic.  But the Culture War looks to be sweeping through New Mexico without effective opposition from Catholics or anyone else.  What, if anything, will New Mexico’s Catholic bishops say – more importantly, do – about this?  Will they take a break from shilling for illegal-alien amnesty long enough even to notice?  I’m not hopeful.

Maybe the AMC-TV producers who chose to set Breaking Bad in New Mexico knew what they were doing.  The drug-driven evil that show portrays is morally no worse than the evils these New Mexico judges and clerks are perpetrating, and that New Mexico politicians are abetting.  It’s noteworthy that these victories for sodomatrimony come hard on the heels of the New Mexico Supreme Court’s denying that Christian believers Jon and Elaine Huguenin have any right to decline to do the photography for a lesbian pairing’s “wedding.”  NMSC judge Richard Bosson even had the gall to write, of their being compelled to do business that outrages their religious beliefs, that he “would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship.”  What is the worth of such citizenship?

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus nunc… in New Mexico and all across America.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

I would just like to point out something that has been said before, but needs to be said again and again. When marriage law is changed in this way, it redefines all marriages and therefore is a form of cultural theft. Millions of people are now involuntarily part of an institution which they never chose to enter. Millions of people have vowed fidelity to an entirely different institution and that institution has been taken away.

— Comments —

Earl writes:

“Millions of people have vowed fidelity to an entirely different institution and that institution has been taken away.”

This is why I am considering divorcing my wife when homo marriage comes to my state. (This really upsets her when I talk about it.) I could remarry in front of the church in a kind of covenant marriage. I would lose a lot of tax benefits, but she could gain a lot of welfare benefits. My wife could enroll in every program for welfare and assistance, and I could be like her live-in boyfriend. Many welfare queens do this already and get away with it. (Admittedly, my wife probably would never enroll in these things.)

It is also getting more difficult for me to offer marriage counseling to nominal Christians in this secularized legal environment. Why should a husband or wife who come to me for marriage counseling obey God’s precepts in marriage if they never even had a Christian marriage in the first place? They were married by a godless state institution; would I tell a Muslim woman to submit to her husband if her husband is a Muslim? Why should I tell an American woman to submit to her husband when she has been married by the godless state? Why shouldn’t they too get a divorce and remarry in the proper institution: The Church? Is my marriage, which was established in front of a Justice of the Peace in Las Vegas, as an atheist myself and my wife a wayward drug addict, a Christian marriage in any sense? Perhaps I should renew my vows in front of our church ASAP.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, tear up your marriage certificate!

 Laura writes:

Civil marriage was already redefined when divorce was legalized, making all civil marriage conditional. In that sense, legalization of divorce as analogous to this in that it redefined marriage without the consent of those who were already married. The Catholic sacrament of marriage has also been weakened by ready annulments, but in general the civil and Church institutions of marriage are not the same thing.

As to your question about whether you should renew your vows, I can only speak as a Catholic. The sacrament of marriage is important.

See previous discussions about tearing up marriage certificates here, here and here.

Matthew writes:

If something is licensed, it’s not a right. As the county officials tacitly acknowledge in issuing licenses, marriage is a privilege licensed by the state (like fishing and driving). A licensed privilege is–by definition–not a “right,” for which one does not–by definition–need a license. Aren’t these county officials committing a criminal act by issuing licenses in violation of statutory requirements governing the issuance of licenses? Would one say that everyone has a “right” to drive, and that it is, therefore, morally imperative to issue driver’s licenses to the blind?

Laura writes:

I don’t see how they cannot be criminal acts or at least impeachable offenses.

Terry Morris writes:

Earl wrote parenthetically: “Admittedly my wife would probably never sign up for these programs.” Let’s hope not!

My eldest son often relates a story a Vo-Tech administrator told a group of new students our son was a part of during his first-year introductory classes. It concerns a married woman who, in defiance of her husband’s wishes, enrolled in a course at the school some years previously. The administrator explained that the husband’s concern was twofold: first, that they had young children still at home who needed their mother, who was already working a part-time job against his wishes, and second, that the course would ultimately facilitate his wife’s becoming more independent and thus endanger their marriage. He went on to say that the woman had graduated the course with honors, and immediately took a job in her specialized field, quitting her part-time job.

The administrator’s attitude, according to our son, was one favorable to the woman and condescending toward her husband. Asked by our son what the current status of their marriage was, he (the administrator) indicated they had been divorced several years and that she is still working in the field the school had trained her in: facts the adminstrator took a great deal of satisfaction from, according to our son. To facilitate her becoming financially and otherwise independent of her husband, and an irresponsible, absentee mother, you see, was an express mission of the school, albeit not officially stated as such. In other words, the school’s (unofficial) mission was/remains to destroy families. Same as the State’s under which it operates. Of course this is not the same thing as the welfare benefits Earl speaks of that his wife would become eligible for upon their divorce, but the point is that she would also become eligible, upon divorce, for educational and associated benefits as well that she is likely not eligible for as a legally married woman with a husband who supports her and their family. Probably not a good idea to make things easier for her, therefore, if Earl doubts, to one extent or the other, his wife’s absolute fidelity to her family. I’m not saying he does doubt her, but just saying.

Laura writes:

That’s an interesting story. I believe Earl was joking about the divorce.

Please follow and like us: