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Texas Accidentally Bans Straight Marriage
Law designed to forbid gay civil unions actually bars any unions
By Kevin Spak
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Posted Nov 19, 09 7:28 AM CST
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(Newser)
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The geniuses who wrote Texas’ gay marriage ban may have accidentally banned all marriage in the state, according to one Houston lawyer. Subsection B of the ban, a constitutional amendment ratified in 2005, states, “This state…may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” The intent was to prevent even civil unions for gay couples—but it doesn’t actually specify the “gay” part.
The wording essentially “eliminates marriage in Texas,” Barbara Ann Radnofsky, the Democratic candidate for state attorney general tells the McClatchy Papers. “You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says.” Conservatives scoffed at Radnofsky’s tactics. “It’s a silly argument,” said the head of an organization that helped draft the amendment. A lawsuit based on it would have “about one chance in a trillion” of succeeding.