Bottom Left Politics

According to an article that appeared in The Advocate today, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has proven what his haughty, bourgeois name implies – that he is, without a doubt, an asshole.  The Republican (it almost goes without saying, doesn’t it?) chief law officer of the state made it clear on Friday that he did not consider a recent law granting same-sex couples domestic partnership benefits – which amount to a paltry one-fourth of the benefits available to married couples – to be valid under Wisconsin law, and therefore he is refusing to defend it against conservative opposition in court.  Now, the future of this law remains uncertain as the state of Wisconsin is forced to look for outside legal defense against a lawsuit waged by the Wisconsin Family Council claiming that domestic partnerships are in violation of a 2006 constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.

Now, to be fair, we on the radical gay left (i.e., the perpetrators of the homosexual agenda) were in a tizzy when President Obama’s Justice Department defended the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act.”  We scurried to refute the claim that the Justice Department must defend each and every law.  So what’s the difference between the Justice Department refusing to defend an anti-gay law and the Attorney General of Wisconsin refusing to defend a pro-gay law, you may ask?  The difference is that, while DOMA flies in the face of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and is thus unconstitutional, the law in Wisconsin granting same-sex couples a limited series of benefits contradicts no law – not even the 2006 constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.  Under the amended state constitution, same-sex marriage and anything substantially similar is not legally recognized by the state of Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin Family Council is making the unsurprisingly incoherent, illogical argument that giving same-sex couples one-quarter of the rights that legally married couples enjoy is somehow “substantially similar” to the institution of marriage.

Wisconsin same-sex couples might beg to differ.  They might tell you that, no, they are nowhere close to married;  rather, they simply enjoy a very thin veil of rights, including health coverage, taking leave for an ill partner, and end-of-life decisions.  These are very, very basic rights – rights that one would expect the government to provide, even to same-sex couples.  The Wisconsin Family Council, on the other hand, sees it as a direct assault on the 2006 same-sex marriage ban, and Van Hollen apparently agrees.  And so Van Hollen, the man to whom all Wisconsans – gay or straight – look to when it comes to defending the laws of Wisconsin, is sticking up his proverbial middle finger and saying “FUCK YOU” to same-sex couples whom he appears to abhor.  To defend this law would be a violation of the duties of his position, apparently (Van Hollen obviously has not a clue as to what those duties entail), and so the state is on its own.  But he assures the citizens of Wisconsin that his decision to simultaneously deprive each and every gay and lesbian in the state of Wisconsin of civil rights was not based on a policy disagreement.  No, no, I’m not a homophobe!  Just an unbiased defender of the law!

That’s interesting, coming from the same guy who interpreted the state’s ban on concealed weapons as allowing open carrying of those same weapons.  To interpret it otherwise, Van Hollen claimed, would be unconstitutional.  For having such a thorough knowledge of the Wisconsin constitution, Mr. Van Hollen must have skipped over the first section, which states that:

All people are born equally free, and have certain inherent rights;  among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;  to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This applies to gun owners, who are now free to their “pursuit of happiness” by showing off their guns on the streets of Milwaukee.  Because, according to Van Hollen’s advanced legal reasoning, barring individuals from carrying guns in public would amount to a deprivation of their right to bear arms, even though they would still be free to keep guns in their homes and hunt and shoot and whatever else these small-penised morons do in their spare time.  A liberal interpretation of the constitution is in order when it comes to gun owners, but a different mindset is required when dealing with the nasty homosexual perverts who have in mind the goal of decimating the sacred institution of marriage.  The idea that depriving same-sex couples of their very basic rights – as deficient as they may be – just might be in violation of Section 1’s guarantee to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” does not even appear to be on the table.

So what next?  Will the citizens of Wisconsin sit back and watch their Attorney General, Van-Whatever, shred the constitution and use it to wipe his elite, conservative ass?  I think it’s time to demand the man’s resignation.  But, hey, I’m not from Wisconsin, so who am I to make such demands?

However, I do think that it’s a sad reflection on the state and its populace if the Attorney General is allowed to shirk his duties in such a blatant manner without some sort of public outcry.

The blogger, Kristofer Paul, can be reached at bottomleftpolitics@yahoo.com.