An open letter to the media by 28 scholars

The coverage of the efforts by Edward Snowden to get asylum in the four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Nicaragua) has been accompanied by much snickering among the chattering classes about the ‘irony’ that a whistleblower championing transparency would seek asylum in countries that supposedly do not themselves have much press freedom. This ignores the obvious fact, of course, that now that he has largely achieved his goal of blowing the lid off the US government’s actions, his primary task is to find a country that will not let him fall into the hands of the repressive Obama regime. [Read more…]

And another challenge to state same-sex marriage bans

In Montgomery County in Pennsylvania, the Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes said that he had decided to grant licenses to gay couples to get married because he wants to come down “on the right side of history and the law”, despite a state law forbidding such marriages. Two female couples have already received licenses and got married. I am not sure what will happen when the couples apply for marriage benefits or file taxes jointly.

Recall that there is already a legal challenge to the Pennsylvania law that the state’s attorney general has said that she will not defend. The Republican governor has not said what he will do yet.

Important development on same-sex marriage in Ohio

[UPDATE: You can read the full text of the judge’s ruling here. It is pretty strong stuff. This was not a full trial but a request for a restraining order against the state and thus applies only to this case, but the wording of the reasoning suggests that the judge thinks it should hold widely.]

A federal judge in Cincinnati has ruled that even state officials in Ohio must recognize the rights of same-sex couples that were legally married in other states. This is a significant expansion of the US Supreme Court ruling in the DOMA case where the federal government was told that it had to recognize those rights. The judge’s ruling is a major development because Ohio still has on its books the constitutional amendment passed in 2004 that says that marriage is between a man and a woman only, and steps are currently underway to repeal that provision. [Read more…]