Gay Marriage: Going for the Gusto
State by State: The Legal Battle over Gay Marriage
Hundreds of thousands of gay Americans have fought and died on the front lines of freedom throughout the history of this great nation. Millions more pay and have paid taxes throughout the history of this great nation. Yet despite their sacrifice and contribution, gay men and women are the only group of people excluded from certain benefits and freedoms, central to living the American Dream, that the rest of us take for granted, and that is the freedom to marry and receive all the benefits that accompany marriage.
Today, the stage was set in San Francisco for the first federal trial questioning the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans. This trial, likened to a modern version of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the issue of civil rights became a legal matter, is expected to make its way to the US Supreme Court for what could result in a landmark decision on gay marriage. Currently, only five states recognize same-sex marriage. Thirty-six have banned it.
Stuart and I have been a loving, committed couple for 23 years. We're legally married in the state of California. But we're not just Californians. We're Americans, too. And we will not rest until we have the freedom and liberty that our Constitution promises us in every single state in this great nation. -- John Lewis, legally married to Stuart Gaffney, previous plaintiffs in a gay marriage suitSpecifically, the case turns on Proposition 8, the California referendum that barred gay marriage, winning voter approval in November of 2008. Two same-sex couples filed suit over Proposition 8, the 2008 voter-approved initiative that defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman, on the grounds that it violates their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.
"If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of Olson and Boies' side, then you would have legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country. That's a big if at this point, but that would be the implication, ultimately." -- Margaret Talbot, a staff writer at The New Yorker.
4 comments:
More Americans, were opposed to interracial marriage than are opposed to gay marriage today. So it will be interesting to see where this goes.
Yeah but more people might be in favor of gay marriage now but state-by-state almost 40 states passed amendments against gay marriage, whereas, at the time of Loving vs. Virginia, there were only 15-16 states, that still had old anti -miscegenation laws on the books.
I really think "the people" if left alone, would have little to no problem with legalizing gay marriage. It's the powers that be who use everything in their arsenal to make sure that the last minority group, "politically correct" to vilify, remains that way, Galvanizing and/or distracting the masses by fueling hatred towards marginalized groups is crucial to the top down political process we have in place.
Gay marriage is wrong because it has always been considered wrong.
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