A Stitch in Haste

Do you think any conservatives, or any bigots, will get uppity over this "activist judge"?

A Davidson County [Tennessee] judge ... cleared the way for voters to decide in November whether the Tennessee Constitution should be amended to ban gay marriage.
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Tennessee law says that a proposed amendment "shall be published six months previous" to the next election of the General Assembly.
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The ACLU and gay and lesbian groups ... argued that the secretary of state didn't officially publish notice of the amendment until 4 1/2 months before the next election.
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"Undercutting the plaintiffs' case is that the record is clear that due to the unusual and unique facts of this case of extensive and literal media and website coverage and that the text of the proposed amendment never changed from the time it was filed in the General Assembly, the proposed amendment was actually, although not officially, published well in advance of the six-month window required by the Constitution," [Chancellor Ellen Hobbs] Lyle wrote, in her 35-page opinion.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Everyone who has ever read a newspaper knows what "publishing a legal notice" means: it means, literally, publishing a legal notice — placing an official advertisement is a newspaper of general circulation. "Publish" is an active, transitive, verb: If the government must "publish" the amendment, then it must do, it must act, and it did not. End of discussion. There is no provision in the law for some ambiguous gobbledygook about "constructive publication." The law is the law — "publish" means publish — and this (activist) judge disregarded it.

So where is the conservative outrage?

Incidentally, if the position of the Tennessee government is that no official publication was required, then why did they bother publishing a (late) legal notice at all?

If the bigots are so intent on pushing through as many state constitutional amendments as possible before the tide of history washes them away, if the issue is so vitally important to them, then you would think that they would pay more careful attention to the duly enacted laws that they claim to cherish and not go crying to the same "activist judges" that they claim to abhor.

When they say they are guided by principles, they lie.

The case is ACLU v. Darnell. The ACLU is appealing, and I would like to think that their case is open-and-shut. Hopefully the Tennessee Supreme Court will "defend traditional publication" and undo this (activist) judge's flagrant disregard of a duly enacted and unambiguous law.

(Cross-posted at Spectrum Bloggers.)