Judge rules that Kentucky must recognize legal same-sex marriages.
Last week the Commonwealth of Kentucky made headlines all around the country when Federal Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled that Kentucky’s laws and constitutional amendment prohibiting the recognition of legal same-sex marriages performed in other states were unconstitutional. (Bourke v. Beshear) We are not the last state to recognize the wrongs of the past, but sadly we were not the first. In its recent Windsor decision, the US Supreme Court recently came to the same conclusion. Those institutions who currently discriminate against such marriages no longer can use the lame excuse that they are only following the law to cover what for at least some is simple institutional intolerance.
I find it both ironic yet predictable that some folks locally and nationally rail against Judge Heyburn’s decision concerning same-sex marriage as judicial activism and an attack on the Constitution even as they admit to not having read it! I found in the language of the opinion the most logical, eloquent, and powerful arguments in support of our Constitutions in recent memory. It will be instructive to see how local institutions change their existing policies. I asked KentuckyOne Health how they plan to modify their exclusionary policies for their Kentucky employees, but received no response yet. Perhaps KentuckyOne is waiting for the decision to become final at which time they they will have no choice but to change? Continue reading “Reinforcing the Separation of Church and State in Kentucky.”