Another person’s trying to marry an inanimate object, but this time it was a poorly veiled attempt to take down gay marriage.
Chris Sevier is a serial litigant with a vendetta against same-sex marriage. Sevier has filed several lawsuits, like one in Alabama and one in Utah, to have marriage equality overturned.
On top of that, he’s also sued Apple for providing devices that allow users to easily access pornography, and he’s lobbied for Texas lawmakers to make a bill saying all retailers have to put pornography-blocking programs on all their electronics.
And most recently, he tried to use polygamy and marrying inanimate objects to prove his stance that gay marriage is unconstitutional.
As Dallas News reports, Sevier appeared in an Austin, Texas court house late last month, with three polygamists, and asked that the definition of marriage be extended even further.
"The governor is overseeing laws that give benefits to homosexuals who are married, but not objectophiles, zoophiles, and polygamists for reasons that are arbitrary," the four, who represented themselves, wrote in the formal complaint, "The plaintiffs seek to force the government to legally recognize polygamy and man-object marriage, as marriage is a matter of civil rights."
"We will make it impossible for the court to dream up ways to dismiss the action in order to avoid the merits of our constitutional claims," Sevier later told The Dallas Morning News, "While the Judges in Texas can run. They cannot hide (sic)."
In addition, Sevier says he’ll be lobbying for Texas lawmakers to introduce the Marriage and Constitution Restoration Act, which would define any marriage that isn’t between a man and a woman as a “parody marriage.” He’s already tried to introduce similar bills to Wyoming and South Carolina.
Luckily, no judge has agreed with Chris Sevier so far. In fact, U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay dismissed Sevier’s lawsuit last week. She did so because 1. None of the plaintiffs are actually from Texas, 2. This isn’t their “first rodeo” (meaning, at least Sevier is obsessed with court cases), 3. They didn’t have a true and rational argument for their case.
As the state argued during the hearing:
"The right to marry one's computer or enter into polygamous marriages is not an interest that is, objectively, deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition such that it qualifies as a protected interest. Because plaintiffs do not have the fundamental right that they assert and do not belong to either a suspect or quasi-suspect class, and because there are myriad rational bases for prohibiting polygamous marriage or marriage to an inanimate object, plaintiffs fail to state an Equal Protection claim upon which relief may be granted."
That said, Chris Sevier wasn’t deterred. He just said he’d be back, and with more plaintiffs next time.
