Newlyweds Jonathan Joss and Tristan Kern de Gonzales held each other in their final moment together Sunday.
Joss, 59, the voice actor best known as John Redcorn on “King of the Hill,” had just been shot in the head in front of their San Antonio home.
“I didn’t want him to struggle and everything, so I decided to tell him I loved him. And despite the severity of everything, he was able to look up at me and acknowledge what I was saying, so I know he heard me,” said Kern de Gonzales, 32. “I just kept telling him: ‘It’s OK. You need to cross over. You don’t need to keep struggling. You need to go ahead and cross over easy.’”
Kern de Gonzales said Joss’ killer also had final words for the actor. He called him and his husband “jotos,” a Spanish slur for gay people.
“I’ve been called that word while I was sitting on a bench with Jonathan, eating lunch,” Kern de Gonzales said. “And I got called that holding Jonathan while he died.”
Shortly after, police arrested one of the pair’s neighbors, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, 56, in connection with Joss’ killing.
Do you understand how government and law works in the US?
Case precedent, as demonstrated with Roe, can be overruled by a majority of SCOTUS.
A law goes through the house, senate and then is signed by the President and becomes law.
A US Constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote in the house and senate and then 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify.
Each one of those offer greater security of whatever issue is at hand.
Nothing I said makes it easier to amend the conversation but relying on case precedent is the same as relying on a “verbal” contract.
You understand that this goes both ways? The more we accept constitutional amendments as the norm, the more we place our liberties and constitutional rights most people just kind of assume are always guaranteed, at risk.
Look at how Trump handles executive orders. Imagine what he would do if people just accepted constitutional amendments no big deal.
I live in Louisiana, and I’m watching this happen right now with my governor and the state constitution. The amendments were worded in a very confusing way, and even legal experts agreed that it was unclear what the repercussions of the amendments passing would be.
In a surprising outcome, the state shot down all 4 of the proposed constitutional amendments, because people are recognizing this guy is a tyrant trying to abuse his executive power.
Pretty clear that people don’t want those amendments right? Cool, so problem solved let’s move on. Nope, he’s making us vote again on the same amendments because he’s, hoping that he can word it just right, and pad it with enough things that will please his voter base, so eventually voter apathy will kick in for the opposition and allow his amendments to pass.
State ≠ Federal
The harder it is to do, the harder it is to undo. That’s why you enshrine it in law or a constitutional amendment.
When you don’t then (currently) 5 people can decide to completely change decades of accepted practice.
I’m not sure how to explain it any simpler.
Same-sex marriage is a better example because there’s been rumblings from the SCOTUS about revisiting Obergefell however, with the Respect for Marriage Act passed under Biden, same-sex marriage is protected by law. Revisiting Obergefell won’t change that; it would require Congress.
Right, and who is in control of Congress right now? Any amendments they’ve brought up lately?
Amendment to Give Trump a Third Term Has ‘A Lot of Support’: GOP Rep
100 Senators and 435 Representatives.
First sentence of your article, “A Republican Representative has claimed that a proposed amendment to the Constitution to allow presidents to serve more than two terms has “a lot of support” among GOP colleagues.”
I bet they make that claim; might even be true. Do they all? Does 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of Congress? Do 38 state legislatures support it?
First you accuse me of somehow arguing to make constitutional amendments easier, which I haven’t. Then you provide an article where a GOP Representative has claimed something and act like all the additional hurdles of making a constitutional amendment don’t exist.
I’m done with this argument. There is no logical or factual basis where case law precedent is better than enacting a law for explicitly protecting a woman’s right to choose. Your example of Roe literally demonstrates the point.
Look dude, we have gotten so far from the actual point of my “wall of text,” which you couldn’t be bothered to read before arguing several more walls of text.
So let me just put aside the fact that I believe it’s a bad idea to set a precedent where we rely too much on the government making constitutional amendments to reflect changes in modern society (not that it is not sometimes necessary, but that constitutional amendments should not be the default for improving America, otherwise you risk bad actors attempting to modify or remove protections and benefits that already exist in the constitution).
Let’s also set aside that congress, currently controlled by Trump loyalists, want a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to use the same strategy Vladimir Putin has used to make himself president for life and destroy democracy, and that this is exactly why I feel the way I do about constitutional amendments.
In a world where those concerns don’t exist, I still have to ask why not just have it codified into law instead?
The short/uncomplicated answer for why Roe v Wade was never codified by something like the Women’s health protection act, is because it didn’t have enough support across both the house and Senate (bc once again, the issue used by the Heritage Foundation to create a false political division that didn’t actually exist, has worked as intended. Yet most people are oblivious about who created that division, and the campaign they ran, that to this day, makes people feel so reactionary about things such as abortion. This is also the reason so many on the left worry they will lose moderate supporters, while taking their left base for granted, which they are now also beginning to lose due to voter apathy as a result of these people constantly trying to appease moderates.)
Given that we couldn’t even get enough support for that to be codified into law, and putting aside literally everything else, why would you think it would somehow alternatively be easier to get enough congressional support to pass a constitutional amendments for any issue being used to keep people divided?
There is no logical or factual basis where case law precedent is better than enacting a law for explicitly protecting a woman’s right to choose. Your example of Roe literally demonstrates the point.