Today, a federal judge in Louisiana upheld that state’s ban on marriage equality, making him the first to find that such bans are not in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause since the Supreme Court’s landmark Windsor v. U.S. decision.
Today’s ruling follows an unbroken string of federal decisions — in both U.S. District and Appellate courts — striking down similar bans in state after state after the 2013 Windsor decision’s determination that the U.S. government may not deny equal benefits to married same-sex couples.
In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman, wrote that the concept of same-sex marriage was “nonexistent and even inconceivable until very recently”; that the state had a “legitimate interest…in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents”; and that marriages between two individuals of the same sex was based on “lifestyle choices”.
And now, you’ll be shocked to learn that Feldman — a Ronald Reagan-appointee and a close friend of Justice Antonin Scalia (who wrote the Windsor dissent for the Court’s minority) — has a damning record of judicial corruption.
The BRAD BLOG’s legal analyst and attorney Ernie Canning offered a damning case for Feldman’s impeachment in 2010, after he struck down the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling instituted in the Gulf of Mexico following the deadly 2010 BP oil disaster there.
As Canning detailed at the time, despite financial holdings in the oil industry that would have been directly affected by his own ruling, Feldman failed to properly disclose those conflicts of interest and recuse himself from the case.
“Despite having served as a federal judge for 27 years, Judge Feldman is unfit to sit in judgment of others,” Canning wrote in response to the evidence in June of that year. “The only appropriate recourse is for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who takes his or her oath of office seriously, to introduce articles of impeachment against Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman.”
• Read Canning’s detailed 2010 coverage and call for Feldman’s impeachment here…
It’s just so hard to take a guy seriously with the name Marty Feldman…
So that means that since my wife and i could not have children ourselves and had to adopt children, our marriage is no longer legal , because our children are being corrupted by a couple that are not their biological parents (and happen to be a mixed race couple). The rationale by Judge Feldman is the same one that prevented mixed race couples (who were heterosexual) from being married. BY not having a “standard” marriage we are somehow preventing the proper development of children that let’s say Ray Rice and his heterosexual wife will nurture properly.