How the ‘Gay Marriage’ Ruling Will Affect Michigan Law

The Supreme Court’s ruling last month that marriage was a human right that could not Constitutionally be denied to homosexual couples was, in a word, correct. But that fact doesn’t necessarily mean that Michigan’s state laws will ever give the appearance of complying with the ruling…or that the rest of Michigan’s laws will ever comply with the spirit of the ruling.

Where Old Laws (Don’t) Go to Die
There are actually quite a few laws in the Constitution of the State of Michigan (and, to be clear, in most State Constitutions) that are in violation of the US Constitution. For example, Michigan still has a law against burning the American flag, even though the Supreme Court of the United States has rules that burning the flag is a form of free speech and is thus protected by the First Amendment. There’s also a law that sets the voting age in Michigan at 21, when Federal law (and actual usage) has it at 18, and another that sets term limits for Michigan’s Senators and Representatives which are different from those set by Federal law.

The reason that these laws don’t go away is fairly straightforward: they don’t have to. Unenforced laws are as good as repealed laws as far as the government is concerned, and to clean up Michigan’s Constitution would require the politicians to create, vote on, and pass an Act that would make all of those changes. It’s difficult, perhaps ironically, to convince a bunch of politicians to do something entirely for the sake of appearances.

Legal Struggles Remain
The fact that homosexual marriage is now a reality country-wide doesn’t mean that homosexual marriage is going to be as smooth as a heterosexual marriage. There are simply far too many unanswered questions that surround the ‘edges’ of marriage.

• Children: How, legally, does the court establish which parent in a homosexual relationship is the ‘mother’ and which is the ‘father’? It’s a question that has a host of implications, most of which aren’t explicitly present in the texts of laws, but are nevertheless an accepted part of several areas of law — mostly in the case of divorce proceedings.
• Birth Certificates: Similarly, Michigan’s birth certificates require one parent to assign themselves the title of ‘Father,’ and the other ‘Mother.’ In a modern world where a child can be conceived with artificial insemination and adopted by their biological mother’s female marriage partner before they’re even born, how will that problem be handled? It’s not a small question, either, because there are major legal ramifications that ride on the establishment of parentage, which is most commonly and easily done on the birth certificate.
• Adoption: Michigan passed a law earlier this year that secures the right of a religious adoption agency to turn away a homosexual couple for “religious reasons,” which essentially shuts homosexual couples out of roughly one-third of all adoptions that occur within the state.

While Family Law agencies around Michigan have transitioned smoothly to support homosexual couples in their efforts to marry and enjoy the benefits thereof, the law — both in its actual wording and in its actual effects, though in different ways — will probably take years, if not decades, to catch up. In the meantime, those of us devoted to serving Michigan’s citizens though that law are here to do everything we can.