am solidly with Chief Judge Judith Kaye on this - the court majority has decided to place itself on the wrong side of history. They will be remembered with the Dred Scott Court, the Plessy Court, and the Court that approved the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent just because of their ancestry, and all those courts that upheld anti-miscegenation laws prior to 1967's Loving case.

Some of the majority opinion is positively sad - the judges in the majority cannot seem to even get the facts firmly set in their minds without getting them wrong.

The Court of Appeals abandoned its responsibility to protect individual rights against the encroachment of the tyranny of the majority. In doing so, it placed itself squarely in the same position as King George III, as an oppressor and the arm of an oppressive government.

The Court of Appeals has breached, on behalf of the government but not the *people* of the State of New York, the social contract we as the people have with the government. And if the Court places itself and the government it stands for in the position of the tyrant trampling on our rights, then they might be mindful of Jefferson's allusions to the proper watering of the Tree of Liberty.

Unless the Court is able to reverse itself in another case, or the legislature actually does act to confirm our rights, this decision will be on the heads of the members of the Court, and on all elected and appointed government officials at the State level.

Luckily, we do not need to engage in a bloody revolution in order to assert our rights. All we need do is set up an alternative government, complete with legislature, executive and courts, and disregard that government which has breached its social contract with the People. I am perfectly willing to begin issuing marriage licenses and keeping records of gender-neutral marriages taking place in the State of New York, provided that those who have had their social contract violated by the present government are willing to accept the validity of the acts of the alternative government.

This is the sort of approach that has often been taken by some rather interesting groups, such as the "Republic of Texas" - which apparently hasn't caught on well enough to have actually supplanted the state of Texas.

Still, assertion of the belief that our government has violated the social contract and thus no longer has the legitimate power to tax, or govern the lives of the people within the State of New York, is not to be made lightly.

The Court of Appeals has failed miserably in the discharge of its duties. The legislature has done nothing to enact the bill that would make the marriage laws of the State gender neutral. Perhaps the legislature has not acted in the expectation that the Court would take it off the hook.

Now that we all know the Court has abdicated its responsibility, and certainly, the members of the legislature know this as well, there will be a law passed in its next session. If not, they should understand that there may be adverse consequences, and that perhaps some brave people with principle will pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, as did the Founding Fathers, to insure that the Tree of Liberty remains well nourished and does not die.

If the legislature is made to understand that people who are denied equal rights may eventually do more than merely demonstrate, protest and lobby, and will have a moral right and justification to do more, then the members of the legislature should act in such a way as to insure domestic tranquility and protect the rights of all the people, and not just some.

The possibility of redress in the courts has been closed, and there is only a limited amount of patience to be had with the legislature.

Joann Prinzivalli
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Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
- Rev. Martin Niemoller