First: Suppose the law said: Same-sex couples are allowed to get married, but no one is under any circumstances obliged to marry them. Then there would be no possible grounds for a lawsuit of the kind we're discussing here. Why doesn't that refute your suggestion that perhaps "there is no way the law could work"?
B. This was a preemptive lawsuit, but if there is a preemptive lawsuit then that shows that there was a real risk of coercion that it was trying to prevent.
This is an incorrect description of my argument. It is not true, in general, that preemptive lawsuits indicate a real risk. But it is true in this case, because what they were told by the city attorney's office.
I was actually rather hoping you'd answer the last question I asked: what do you think they should have done instead and why?
I don't know that there was anything they could have done instead. It may just be that they were screwed.
(This discussion doesn't seem to be generating much light. I think I might drop it somewhere around now.)
I didn't say you did say there was no way the law could work; I said you said that perhaps there was no way the law could work, because there might be no way to avoid the risk of lawsuits, and then I explained why it seemed obvious that there is a way to avoid that risk.
I already commented on the possibility of lawsuits going the other way, and explained why I didn't think it relevant to your argument.
...it is true in this case, because [of] what they we
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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