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Sadly, I already took this “coward's way out” cutting a check to the local probate court rather than raising the matter the hard way, and am now far too satisfied with my legal name to fuck with it any further; someone else with a similar impulse will need to tackle this.
(I wonder if we'll see the ACLU stepping up on this matter only after someone is actually refused a court order for name change... which they generally only do for sex offenders and other criminals whose “crimes involv[ed] moral turpitude”...)
Why is this the coward's way out? If it's more convenient or efficacious to do an extremely minor amount of paperwork and pay a trivial filing fee, that seems totally reasonable.
[ For real law nerds, the real question is why does Alabama use
-as the delimiter for their legal clauses rather than.like everyone else. ]Not challenging illegal government authority is a slippery slope. Presumably.
If nobody does anything about undue power it becomes normal, and eventually legal.
Presumably one doesn't challenge the illegal actions of the government unless they are both illegal and have some specific articulable harm to someone.
The harm here (if there is any) seems trivial enough not to
Incidentally, one could make the inverse of a slippery slope argument -- if you cry "fascist" at every government overreach no matter how minor, it detracts from the real battles. Save your powder and so forth.
I always wondered what was actually more effective, to ruthlessly attack even the most minor of transgressions or to keep around the potential of a killing blow.
Seems to me that the logistics of maintaining power require constant use and practice. But that goes both ways. Power will learn to contain what it is confronted with.
In France we are fond of violent riots, but that means any French regime has riot police, vastly limiting the utility of direct action as a political tactic.
But then again I see the US's 2a growing ever more theoretical a right to contest the government militarily precisely because that's not a button you want to press often.
I think it's both situational and tactical. Lawsuits are very expensive and you can waste 8 years only to have them thrown out because you didn't pick the right vehicle. At the same time, in a situation where one has a benefit in leverage and relative effort, it is beneficial to flood the field. I don't see a one-size-fits-all piece of advice.
Also I think the 2A is doing rather well. There will always be some gap left when imposing federal dictat on recalcitrant States (same when it was abortion from the left), but most of the US has shall-issue CCW.
Where's the gap in gay marriage? The gap in abortion was rather smaller and always contested until Dobbs. Meanwhile, we've got multiple states (including NY, of Bruen fame) with "shall issue" CCW which have so many exceptions in places where you are allowed to carry, that you'll very likely be a felon if you attempt to take advantage of it. And I still can't buy a gun in any state (including my home state of NJ), whereas leaving the state for an abortion (or marriage) was never forbidden.
Heller and Bruen were absolutely empty victories. The case which matters is Rahimi, which says "when push comes to shove, the Court will find a reason to accept a gun restriction".
Prior to Dobbs, there were States with just a single abortion clinic. Most everyone with a fetal anomaly detected at the point of anatomy scan (can't get those before 20 weeks) had to fly out to what, 2 dozen clinics?
Gay marriage doesn't have a gap because even Republicans got behind it. At its peak (ironically the T part of the LGBT movement sunk it a bit recently) it was polling 67% -- that's more than Reagan got against Mondale (59-41) or LBJ v Goldwater (61-39) both considered historic landslides.
Which is one more place than I have to buy a gun in New Jersey. (Or anywhere)
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