Burnt Orange Report

Hello #5: South Africa

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

South Africa's highest court, in a 10-1 decision the other day ruled that the country's very progressive constitution, demands that the state recognize same-sex unions on par with heterosexual ones. They have set a deadline of one year for Parliament to comply. The one odd vote was not against the decision, rather opposed to it because they felt it should go into affect now, not in a year.

South Africa will become the fifth country in the world to permit same-sex marriage, behind the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Canada; but the decision is not only at odds with the views of the vast majority of its own citizens, but also the rest of Africa, where homosexuality remains largely taboo.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, President Mugabe frequently attacks homosexuals and lesbians as “worse than dogs and pigs”. Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda, has outlawed homosexual sex, declaring it to be “against the order of nature”. He recently ordered detectives to find gays and “lock them up and charge them”.

In a landmark ruling, the Johannesburg-based Constitutional Court ordered that the definition of marriage be changed from a “union between a man and a woman” to a “union between two persons”.

Remember, here in Texas, the Attorney General the other day denied the marriage of a Kerr County Heterosexual couple, based on nepotism laws.

When Kerr County Tax Assessor-Collector Paula Rector decided to get married, she sought permission - not from family or friends, but from the state attorney general.

And she didn't get it.

Rector, 54, wanted to marry one of the district's tax appraisers. But the couple worried that their marital union would violate the state's nepotism law, so they brought the case before Attorney General Greg Abbott.

In an opinion released Tuesday, Abbott confirmed their fears, ruling that the couple could not marry and simultaneously retain their positions.

"Isn't that crazy? We thought it was funny that we had to wait for an attorney general's opinion to tell us whether we could or couldn't," Rector told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday. "I bet that's never happened before."

Join the club Paula. You'll make a fine addition to "Can't Get Marriage" brigade.