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Loading ...Should gay marriage remain a states issue?
05.28.2009 12:25pm EDT
(San Francisco, California) California’s status as a guardian of gay rights slipped this week when its highest court upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, even as other states extended the institution to gay couples.
“Are the people of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire more sexually literate than Californians?” asked the National Sexuality Resource Center, a San Francisco-based think tank, naming the states where gays can or soon will be able to wed.The California Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, in a state that’s home to 14 percent of the nation’s same-sex couples and was the first to offer gays the spousal rights of marriage without being ordered to by a court.
Voters in 2008 passed the constitutional amendment, which trumped an earlier state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
In spite of the setback in the state, gay rights advocates say they still believe what happens there is important no matter the outcome. Supporters and opponents spent $83 million on the Proposition 8 campaign last year, making it the most expensive election on a social issue in the nation’s history.
“Certainly California remains very important in this epic struggle just because it’s so big,” said Richard Socarides, who served as President Bill Clinton’s adviser on gay civil rights.
And because of its size, gay rights advocates say they’ll continue their campaign to win over more voters. Leaders of Equality California and Courage Campaign said they have started canvassing in more conservative parts of the state, working with religious and ethnic groups and otherwise learning from mistakes made during last year’s failed campaign.
“The biggest thing California can do is win back marriage at the ballot box,” said Mary Bonauto, the civil rights director of Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which brought the lawsuit that led to Massachusetts becoming the first state to sanction same-sex marriage.
“We have won marriage in courts, we have even now marriage winning in legislatures,” she said. “To win it with the people would crumble the right wing’s whole house of cards.”
Bonauto said that if California advocates succeeded in getting Proposition 8 reversed, it would mark an unprecedented milestone: 28 other states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage but none have been challenged with a popular vote.
As California gay rights groups prepared to launch a campaign to repeal Proposition 8 at the ballot box next year, two lawyers announced Tuesday they had filed a federal lawsuit challenging the initiative in the hopes of getting the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who represented opposing sides in the 2000 Bush v. Gore election challenge, said they think the high court is ripe to take on the issue. They filed on behalf of two gay men and two gay women.
“I felt it was very important we present the American people and the courts a unified front and tell the courts and the American people through our presence and our participation this is not about right or left or partisan politics,” Olson said. “This is about what we all share as Americans.”
But it wasn’t a move welcomed by all advocates. Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said the suit “sends a powerful message that the time for change has come,” but also warned the lawyers of the “only one shot at the U.S. Supreme Court.”
They and “any attorneys bringing a case that will affect the freedom and legal status of an entire community bear a very heavy responsibility to be certain they have fully considered the consequences,” Minter said.
Gay rights activists also were pressuring President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to work toward repealing the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. The law prevents couples in states that recognize same-sex unions from securing Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint taxes and other federal rights of marriage.
The focus, however, remained on working though state legislatures and voters to win marriage rights, said Evan Wolfson, executive director of New York-based Freedom to Marry.
“Winning marriage in more states is crucial not only for the families living in those states, but for creating a comfort level that sets the stage for a national resolution,” he said.
That line of thinking is EXACTLY the reason why so many states NOW have bans on gay marriage. Passion is a poor substitute for intelligence.
Morgan: You are so right. Some of us don’t have very long to wait for justice. I am tired of being told to wait.
I believe more than ever now that there is a never a right or convenient moment for human rights or for civil rights.
You could wait forever if you don’t act “until the right moment” arrives. Human beings are not the longest lived species in the total sceme of living things. One can become quite old in just 20 years, 20 years can make a difference one’s health and quality of life. We humans don’t have the luxury of forever when it comes to love, relations and marriage if desired.
Noone has the right to tell any adult who to fall in love with and marry (if that is desired) so, I say, go after this again and again and do not give up until the federal level Defense of Marriage Act is repealed and do while the momentum is building. Do not wait for later.
Kari: that old saw has been abandoned by the courts, even those that have not ruled in our favor. I would love that to be the only barrier in our quest for equal rights. Even Scalia would laugh in your face at the absurdity and circularity of such an argument.
Sarrellec: Equal protection means, simply, that the laws are not written to treat any citizen differently than any other.
There is no lack of equal protection here; a gay man can marry a woman just as legally as a straight man can marry a woman. The law treats gay men and straight men equally.
The fact that the gay man does not *want* to marry a woman is noted, but that does not change the fact that the laws regard him as being the same as the straight man. The man is legally able to marry a woman, and thus he is being equally protected under the laws.
The 14th Amendment argument for same-sex marriage is incredibly weak and not particularly compelling. There are much better legal, economic, social and just plain pragmatic arguments for it. Try again.
We have to continue to work state-by-state, but we also have to seek a national solution by working to repeal DOMA and challenging DOMA and discrimination against gays in the US Supreme Court. Most of the “easy” states have already granted either marriage equality or robust domestic partnerships or civil unions. There are a few more states in which we can win legislatively or through state court challenges. But the majority of states will not recognize couples or even provide anti-discrimination protection. Only a national ENDA will provide anti-discrimination protection. Only a repeal of DOMA or a striking it down by the Supreme Court will provide true gay rights in the entire country. After rulings by the Supreme Court in the 1960s and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, even Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas eventually scrapped their Jim Crow laws.
look, this needs to remain a state issue. I mean the diffrence in opinion widley varies from north to south and the its like a diffrent planet in the south than from the north. It would be impossible to make a nationwide decision.
Kari:
You’re wrong.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law for every American citizen without mentioning gender in its definition of an American Citizen.
You’re on a computer. Look up the 14th Amendment and read it.
It defines who/what an American citizen is and then…well…you can read it.
I am sooooooo tired of this African American crap!!!!
WHY does EVERY discussion of equality for homosexual citizens of the United States end up spiraling into the negro thing?????
What about Suffrage? Why not compare gay equality to the equality of women, as an identifiable subset of America?
Why not when the vote was extended to those that weren’t land-holders?
Because gay people are allowed to vote?
Is that the difference?
I’m just so tired of being roped into this choice/not-a-choice crap by dragging in negroes not having a skin-color choice.
Okay…I CHOSE to be gay!
Now what?
Does my existence as an American cease?
Does that choice effect anyone but me and consensual partner(s)?
NO!!!
EVERY TIME we buy into this negro-comparison, we are agreeing to argue this non-sensical choice/no choice BS.
And as for that IDIOT who thought that listing fetishes that would also vie for equality if homosexuality was recognized as a definable subset, I’ve got news for him: THERE AREN’T ANY LAWS REFUSING TO ALLOW PEOPLE WITH FETISHES TO MARRY!
That just ticked me off, so I thought I’d get it off my chest here.
To anyone who wants it to be a federal issue:
The Constitution makes it a state issue. You can no more make it a federal issue than you can make a 20-year-old President.
no civil rights issue should be on a state level.
That’s what the 14th Amendment is for. It was supposed to get rid of all of this state-by-state discriminatory crap that was so active at the time, including inter-racial marriage.
There’s a full-credit clause somewhere in there which states that one state must respect the institutions of another state, therefore, this state-by-state crap is just that: crap.
Without gay marriage done through a Federal level,Mississippi will never have it.
Unsurprisingly, Obama has said NOTHING about the courts decision. Considering that he hasn’t actually DONE anything of significant note for our community yet has NOT gone unnoticed.
Leaving aside the absurdity of putting minority rights–especially those deemed “fudnamental” in the CA Supreme Court’s initial ruling–to a majority vote (sounds like tyrrany of the majority to me), doesn’t this whole idea actually bring in Congress via the Commerce Clause? If some states permit same-sex marriage and some don’t, doesn’t that inhibit the liberties of those couples to live and work by coercing them to live in certain states and penalizing them if they don’t? Doesn’t it hurt the recruitment of companies and universities if they have their hands tied in such a fashion?
Advances in civil rights have never come without big risks being taken. Just look at MLK who risked his life for civil justice for the African American community. So too, advancement towards marriage equality for gay and lesbian people will not come without some major risk taking. I say more power to Olsen and Boies in their Federal lawsuit to stop this disgraceful and outrageous display of civil rights violation called Prop 8 in CA!