The two gay marriage decisions of the Supreme Court today will be seen as landmark, path breaking decisions, among the greatest in all of American history!
It has been a long time coming for gay and lesbian Americans, to achieve legal equality under the law and Constitution of the United States. It is a fantastic victory for civil rights and human rights, and will make it a lot easier for young Americans, and really all Americans, who recognize they have a different sexual orientation, which should not be discriminated against by others who refuse to accept change!
The decisions declare the key provision of the Defense Of Marriage Act unconstitutional, and also allow California to follow the circuit court decision, negating Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state, after it has already been allowed.
So California will join twelve other states over the next few months that allow gay marriage—Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in New England; New York, Maryland and Delaware in the Middle Atlantic; Iowa and Minnesota in the Midwest; and Washington State on the Pacific Coast.
It seems likely that other states, mostly “Blue” Democratic states in the last Presidential election, will soon join those 13 states, while the likelihood of “Red” or Republican states legalizing it seems far off, if not impossible to imagine.
But the fight to have the Supreme Court overturn the entire Defense of Marriage Act, allowing the Court to declare gay marriage legal in all states, following the tradition of Loving V. Virginia on interracial marriage in 1967, is the next battle, as the right to marry should be national in scope, not based on the states denying equal protection under the law!
It will take some time, but the day is not far off before gay marriage is legal everywhere in America, and if the right wing and the religious bigots have a problem, so be it, as they will have to accept it, as much as they opposed interracial marriage fifty years ago, but ultimately had to accept, at least publicly, although one can be certain there are many such people as these, who still are opposed to interracial marriage!
The point is that the right to marry is a civil right, and no public opinion poll, referendum, or utterance of a talk show host or some preacher should stand in the way of this basic human right, and the right to pursuit of happiness!
If Republican-controlled state legislatures, in states which haven’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1988 (or before), want to fight against this … the Democrats will have an issue to run on blue states for next year’s midterm elections.
Even though this topic isn’t about a Republican politican endorsing same-sex couples for marriage [equality] … perhaps it shouldn’t be too much longer before Maine’s Susan Collins makes it official.
By the way: I don’t live in New Jersey. But if I did, it would be one more reason not to see through the bull**** tough-guy antics of Gov. Chris Christie. (Who, in another by the way, is wasting taxpayers’ money on separate elections, with under a one-month spread in time, on the special U.S. Senate and the general election which includes his governor race.)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/chris-christie-doma-reaction-93483.html
If he were truly smart, he would (as another New Jerseyite might put it) … shut the f*** up!
Chris Christie will never be president of the United States.
Revise:
“But if I did, it would be one more reason [TO] see … ”
I need to hire me an editor. (Sorry.)
Ronald writes, “It seems likely that other states, mostly ‘Blue’ Democratic states in the last Presidential election, will soon join those 13 states, while the likelihood of ‘Red’ or Republican states legalizing it seems far off, if not impossible to imagine.”
It’s a matter of the order.
In between blue states may be purple states.
Referring to the color wheel, I wouldn’t be surprised it turns out some blue-violet states beat a couple (or few) blue states, in part, because of the 2010 midterms results. (Pennsylvania and Michigan are two states in the habit of electing governor from the party opposite an incumbent president. They’re pivotal with midterms and being reflective of the total national picture.)
I agree with you, D, that Christie is trying to win the evangelical Right, but as I have stated in earlier blog entries that Christie will NEVER be President, and would be a disaster if he was, with his big mouth, which gets him in trouble, and his abrupt, rude manner!
I would like to thank Justice Kennedy and the four concurring Justices for smearing and demeaning the millions of American citizens who don’t share their moral view with respect to marriage. The Supreme Court ruling, smears supporters of traditional marriage as a means of justifying their opinion. The majority simply arrived at its point of view because the opponents of homosexual marriage are reprobates and bigots. There’s no legal reasoning here, or very little. This demeans the Supreme Court, and it’s turned the Supreme Court into nothing different from any venue in this country where people argue.
From Scalia’s dissent: “The majority concludes that the only motive for this Act was the ‘bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group.'” Think about that for a moment. The majority, Justice Kennedy and the four concurring Justices, in their ruling, said “the only reason” that the Defense of Marriage Act was passed was because supporters of it want to “harm a politically unpopular group.” That simple allegation has nothing to do with the law. It has nothing to do with adjudication of cases.
The majority attacks the supporters of the DOMA as having as their sole motivation, the only motive was to harm homosexuals. They then proceed from there in declaring it unconstitutional. The majority said that it’s unconstitutional because the people who wrote it, the Democrat controlled Congress, and the President who signed it into law, Bill Clinton, were bigots, accusing them of having as their only motivation the wish to harm homosexuals.
The majority held that DOMA inflicts an “injury and indignity†on gay couples so severe that it denies “an essential part of the liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment.†It is motivated by a “‘bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group.†There is, in short, nothing to be said for it or the point of view of its supporters. Period.
As Justice Scalia points out: “Bear in mind that the object of this condemnation is not the legislature of some once-Confederate Southern state … but our respected coordinate branches, the Congress and Presidency of the United States.” “Laying such a charge,” Scalia continues, “against them should require the most extraordinary evidence, and I would have thought that every attempt would be made to indulge a more anodyne explanation for the statute. The majority does the opposite — affirmatively concealing from the reader the arguments that exist in justification. The majority makes only a passing mention of the ‘arguments put forward’ by the Act’s defenders, and does not even trouble to paraphrase or describe them. Instead, it accuses the Congress that enacted this law and the president who signed it of something much worse than, for example, having acted in excess of enumerated federal powers– or even having drawn distinctions that prove to be irrational. Those legal errors may be made in good faith, errors though they are. But the majority says that the supporters of [DOMA] acted with malice — with the ‘purpose’ (ante, at 25) ‘to disparage and to injure’ same-sex couples.
It says that the motivation for DOMA was to ‘demean,’ ibid.; to ‘impose inequality,’ ante, at 22; to ‘impose … a stigma,’ ante, at 21; to deny people ‘equal dignity,’ ibid.; to brand gay people as ‘unworthy,’ ante, at 23; and to ‘humiliat[e]’ their children, ibid.”
This is in the majority opinion! It’s reprehensible. The majority is citing these assumed motivations that you won’t find anywhere in the record of DOMA as being the reasons people wanted it to become law.”
“I am sure,” Scalia writes, “these accusations are quite untrue. To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution.
In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to ‘disparage,’ ‘injure,’ ‘degrade,’ ‘demean,’ and ‘humiliate’ our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence — indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history.”
“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency,” Scalia continues, ” the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this court’s declaration that there is ‘no legitimate purpose’ served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure the ‘personhood and dignity’ of same-sex couples.”
Finally Scalia concludes,”Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better.” Unfortunately the Supreme Court fell short, very short.
Just so we remember.
Statement by President Bill Clinton 1996
On Friday, September 20, prior to signing the Defense of Marriage Act, President Clinton released the following statement:
Throughout my life I have strenuously opposed discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans. I am signing into law H.R. 3396, a bill relating to same-gender marriage, but it is important to note what this legislation does and does not do.
I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages and this legislation is consistent with that position. The Act confirms the right of each state to determine its own policy with respect to same gender marriage and clarifies for purposes of federal law the operative meaning of the terms “marriage” and “spouse”.
This legislation does not reach beyond those two provisions. It has no effect on any current federal, state or local anti-discrimination law and does not constrain the right of Congress or any state or locality to enact anti-discrimination laws. I therefore would take this opportunity to urge Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, an act which would extend employment discrimination protections to gays and lesbians in the workplace. This year the Senate considered this legislation contemporaneously with the Act I sign today and failed to pass it by a single vote. I hope that in its next Session Congress will pass it expeditiously.
I also want to make clear to all that the enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination, violence and intimidation for that reason, as well as others, violate the principle of equal protection under the law and have no place in American society.
Juan writes, “I would like to thank Justice Kennedy and the four concurring Justices for smearing and demeaning the millions of American citizens who don’t share their moral view with respect to marriage.”
You should give your regards to Antonin Scalia, for “moral[s],” who was nominated to the bench by the 40th president who sold weapons to Iran.
D, a great point about Ronald Reagan, and Scalia has no problem smearing and demeaning millions of Americans who happen to be gay or lesbian! Scalia has also been involved in conflicts of interest, as has Clarence Thomas, but as long as they are right wingers, that is alright, according to some people with warped views of what is ethical and moral!