I mean, Jeez, they’ve earned the right to be as miserable as the rest of us!
With the expected addition of California’s citizens after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, some 30 percent of Americans will live in states offering same-sex marriage.
Now the two sides of the marriage wars are gearing up to resume the costly state-by-state battles that could, in the hopes of each, spread marriage equality to several more states in the next few years, or reveal a brick wall of traditional values that cannot be breached.
There is wide agreement from both sides on where the next battlefields will be.
I want to point out something that has gone unnoticed in the coverage of these decisions. While I could not be happier that there is an overt acknowledgement by the SCOTUS that gay people are as human as I am, I’m disheartened by the time it took to get here. We still have a long way to go.
DoMA was passed in 1996. It is now nearly twenty years later that the Court has overturned key provisions of the Act. Keep that in mind as the focus shifts to the states, not just on this issue but on abortion.
It’s hard to believe in the 21st century that we’re still battling for individual sovereignty, for the individual’s right to live life unmolested by antediluvian mores and customs of other people who happen to have a megaphone.
And don’t think the right wing is going to go quietly on any of these issues. Same article:
The opponents of same-sex marriage, while unhappy that the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act and opened the door to gay marriage in California, are taking heart that the court did not declare same-sex marriage a constitutional right.
After a recent succession of stinging defeats in Delaware, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington State — after political campaigns in which they were heavily outspent — the groups have also vowed to step up fund-raising for advertising and mobilizing supporters.
“These court decisions could be a real boon to our fund-raising,” said Frank Schubert, a conservative political consultant and vice president of the National Organization for Marriage. “People tend to react when the wolf is at the door.”
And this isn’t nearly as big an issue as a women’s right to choose. After all, one has merely to look at the heroic efforts of Texas state senator Wendy Davis the other evening, and the concomitant reaction of Hair-for Brains governor Rick Perry, his lieutenant governor David “Do The” Dewhurst, and state senator….ummmmm…uhhhhhh….I forgot. Oops!
That it took DoMA, a prima facie unconstitutional law, three decades to be overturned means we have to double down to protect the rights we supposedly cherish, particularly in this day and age when we’ve given so many of them away for free.
(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)
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