Anyone looking to understand how same-sex marriage went from legal in one state to the law of the land a decade later should not overlook the small crowd that gathered outside San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt hotel just past noon one Friday in July 2008, holding signs that said, “The Hyatt of hypocrisy.”
Those present had been rallied by a retired Republican political operative named Fred Karger. His aim was the defeat of Proposition 8, a ballot measure that if passed, would ban same-sex marriage in California. Instead of aiming to mobilize voters or move public opinion against the measure, however, he decided to target the money behind it.… Seguir leyendo »
Desde hace algunos años, la sociedad norteamericana discute sobre el significado del matrimonio. El pasado 5 de noviembre tuve la oportunidad de asistir a un debate académico entre dos personas que han reflexionado sobre el asunto. Los contendientes eran un joven investigador, Sherif Girgis, coautor del difundido estudio What is Marriage? (más de 70.000 descargas en la base de datos: Social Science Research Network); y su antiguo profesor Stephen Macedo, filósofo político y autor de numerosas publicaciones en defensa del matrimonio homosexual. Debatían ante un grupo de profesores y estudiantes congregados en el aula McCosh50, una de las más grandes de la Universidad de Princeton.… Seguir leyendo »
¿Hasta qué punto la decisión del Tribunal Supremo de Estados Unidos sobre el matrimonio homosexual va a cambiar nuestros sentimientos respecto a nuestro país y respecto a nosotros mismos?
No puedo generalizar. Pero sí puedo hablar en nombre de un niño de 12 años.Es un chico que destaca entre sus hermanos porque le falta el optimismo que tienen ellos, incluso su facilidad para sonreír. Tiene una melancolía que no poseen los demás. Siempre está pensativo, huraño. Cohibido. Nunca está a gusto consigo mismo. Quizá sea genético, quizá no. Se ha dado cuenta de que lo que le acelera el corazón no son las chicas sino otros chicos, y es una sensación solitaria, aterradora e intensa.… Seguir leyendo »
In a landmark decision, the nine justices of the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution guarantees marriage as a right for all, including gay and lesbian couples. And when the US Supreme Court rules on an interpretation of the US Constitution, that ruling is final.
Although the Supreme Court was divided 5-4 on the issue, this decision is just as legally binding as a unanimous one. In the case of Obergefell v. Hodges (and three related cases) the court found that the US Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. This means that all 50 states will have to allow same-sex marriage, and recognise same-sex marriages entered into in other states.… Seguir leyendo »
With the Supreme Court's marriage decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, one might think that equality for gay families has arrived. But that would be a mistake. The court's ruling could work to produce new conflicts and intensify old ones. The danger arises because marriage equality doesn't immediately or necessarily erase cultural and legal attachments to biological, dual-gender parenting.
Consider the position of David Blankenhorn, head of the Institute for American Values and star witness in favor of Proposition 8 when California's gay-marriage ban went on trial in 2010. Back then, Blankenhorn justified such bans based on "[t]he need … to make it as likely as we can, that the biological parents are also the social and legal parents."… Seguir leyendo »
Life has been quiet in Paris — Paris, Texas, that is.
Earlier this year, two bills for the legalization of gay marriage were submitted in the Texas legislature. While the odds for their passage are long, the passions they have aroused are slight. No boisterous anti-gay marriage demonstrations have wound past the local (65-foot-tall) Eiffel Tower, and the only red meat tossed around has been on backyard grills. In fact, all that our gun-toting governor, Rick Perry, could muster on the subject was a tepid: “In Texas, it is fairly clear about where this state stands on that issue.”
Where Texans stand is not just further to the left than Perry believes — polls reveal that a majority of young Republicans support gay marriage — but also to the left of residents of the other Paris — the one in France.… Seguir leyendo »
In my 2007 book, “The Future of Marriage,” and in my 2010 court testimony concerning Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I took a stand against gay marriage. But as a marriage advocate, the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do. I’d like to explain why.
I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn’t just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right.… Seguir leyendo »
Opponents of same-sex marriage worry that allowing two men or two women to wed would radically transform a time-honored institution. But they're way too late on that front. Marriage has already been radically transformed - in a way that makes gay marriage not only inevitable, as Vice President Biden described it in an interview late last year, but also quite logical.
We are near the end of a two-stage revolution in the social understanding and legal definition of marriage. This revolution has overturned the most traditional functions of the institution: to reinforce differences in wealth and power and to establish distinct and unequal roles for men and women under the law.… Seguir leyendo »
When a federal judge ruled last week that a California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage violated the Constitution, he complicated the political strategy of Meg Whitman, the personable Republican billionaire who wants to be our next governor. Yet while most close observers of California politics think the decision is either irrelevant to the race or puts Ms. Whitman in a tough corner, there’s also a chance it could play out in a way that gives her an edge on her opponent, Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry Brown.
After disposing of a more conservative rival in the Republican primary, Ms. Whitman has been trying to court independent voters, especially women, in a state where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.… Seguir leyendo »
The Post asked policy advocates and political experts for their views on the fallout from U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling last week overturning California's Proposition 8. Below, responses from Joe Mathews, Maggie Gallagher, Douglas E. Schoen, Lea Brilmayer, Jarrett T. Barrios and Ed Rogers.
Two backlashes are possible as a result of this decision.
The first, a backlash from opponents of gay rights, is likely to be small. Yes, defenders of Proposition 8 will perform the ritual railing against judicial activists (and complain that the fix was in because the judge who issued the ruling is openly gay). But the facts of the case should put a damper on that.… Seguir leyendo »
The much-anticipated trial to determine the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 is scheduled to begin this morning in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. What’s at stake in this case, filed in federal district court in San Francisco on behalf of two gay couples, is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, but also whether marriage may be otherwise defined in any state.
The entire premise of this litigation is disquieting — that traditional marriage is nothing but “the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay bashing,” as David Boies, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, has written.… Seguir leyendo »
As many Americans know, last week Gov. John Baldacci of Maine signed a law that made this state the fifth in the nation to legalize gay marriage. It’s worth pointing out, however, that there were some legal same-sex marriages in Maine already, just as there probably are in all 50 states. These are marriages in which at least one member of the couple has changed genders since the wedding.
I’m in such a marriage myself and, quite frankly, my spouse and I forget most of the time that there is anything particularly unique about our family, even if we are — what is the phrase?… Seguir leyendo »
If it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.
In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution.… Seguir leyendo »
As the country prepares to enter the Obama era, anxiety over the legal status and rights of gays and lesbians is growing. Barack Obama’s invitation to the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration comes just as the hit movie “Milk” reminds us of the gay rights activism of the 1970s. Supporters of gay rights wonder if the California Supreme Court might soon confirm the legitimacy of Proposition 8, passed by state voters in November, which declares same-sex marriage illegal — leaving them no alternative but to take to the streets.… Seguir leyendo »
The attitude of white, liberal Hollywood toward African- American churches has long been one of almost participatory respect. Whether it’s Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, or the Blind Boys of Alabama on the iPod, or a serious — reverential — mention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference over dinner, the understanding is clear: the black church is a foundational institution in the history of the civil rights struggle, and its music (although it makes reference to Jesus Christ as a personal savior) is smoking hot.
It was only recently that the A-list discovered that this love is unrequited.… Seguir leyendo »
A week after the election, I was riding the bus home in Santa Monica when we went past one of the many protests around the city against the narrow passage of Proposition 8, which amended the California constitution to eliminate marriage rights for an entire class of people.
The bus driver surveyed the situation and exclaimed, loud enough for the passengers to hear, "sodomites!" I've been so hurt and angry since my theoretically liberal and gay-friendly state passed Proposition 8 that I instantly replied, just as loudly, "Hey, I'm one of those sodomites, too!" Maybe I should have had a snappier comeback, but the driver was stunned.… Seguir leyendo »
Countless Americans, gay and otherwise, are still mourning — and social conservatives are still celebrating — the approval last Tuesday of anti-gay-marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and, most heartbreaking, California, where Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed. Eighteen thousand same-sex couples were legally married in California this past summer and fall; their marriages are now in limbo.
But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.
Imagine what it would be like not to be able to marry the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Then imagine how tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in California must have felt last week when the California Supreme Court declared that homosexuals have a right to marriage under the state's constitution.
My visceral reaction to this decision, rendered by a moderately conservative court dominated by Republicans, was to share the joy of the gay and lesbian couples you saw celebrating on television. But my practical reaction was to wonder whether this decision will speed or slow our country's steady change of heart on the matter of recognizing committed gay relationships.… Seguir leyendo »
Conservatives have consoled themselves since Election Day with the knowledge that many “conservative” social issues did well — including (and especially) the eight state “marriage amendments” on the ballot — even if the Republican candidates faltered.
These marriage measures, of which only Arizona’s was defeated, generally prevent recognition of gay marriages by defining marriage as a “union between a man and a woman” in the state constitutions. More than half of the states now have such constitutional provisions (some of which would also forbid same-sex civil unions), and conservatives need to reconsider whether that’s really what we want. There are, in fact, some very good reasons conservatives should oppose this approach.… Seguir leyendo »
By Andrew Cohen. He writes Bench Conference and this regular law column for washingtonpost.com (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/10/06):
Supporters of same-sex marriage, no doubt a little disappointed that the New Jersey Supreme Court didn't go a smidge further and order the state legislature to recognize same-sex marriage as such, should take solace nonetheless in the language, rationale and voting math of the ruling. This was a very good day for their cause, even if they didn't get precisely what they wanted.
I'm sure that most people, when they saw that the case came down to a 4-3 vote, figured that the four-Justice majority represented the Court's more liberal or progressive wing.… Seguir leyendo »
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