Yesterday was the first day of gay marriage in Washington state, and the Stranger has some pictures. If you haven’t seen it yet, Straight Up Thanks is a nice record of the many straight supporters of marriage equality.
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scav
congratulations and all best wishes, especially to the Port townsendites! Party at the Post Office!
Mnemosyne
I hate HuffPo, but I love this picture more, so I’ll link to it:
Larry Duncan and Randell Shepherd
They look like they probably stopped at Cabela’s on the way home to check out the new hunting rifles.
cmorenc
In the upcoming SCOTUS decision over the combined Cal prop-8 and DOMA cases, the most crucial legal point BY FAR, insofar as its practical effect on the ability of the GLT community to enjoy the benefits of marriage equality, is NOT, as many suppose, whether the refusal of states to permit same-sex marriages to take place within their borders violates equal protection, due process, etc. RATHER, it is whether refusal of these states to recognize same-sex marriages formed in states which DO recognize them (e.g. Washington State) violates the full faith and credit clause. Yes, it would be a frustrating, disappointing short-term constitutional development if SCOTUS rules that California prop-8 is constitutionally legal insofar as the state’s right to determine the qualifications for issuing marriage licenses within the state, thus rejecting equal protection arguments. HOWEVER, consider the medium and long-term impact if they at the same time overturn (on full faith and credit grounds) the section of DOMA that maintained that states were not required to recognize the marital status of same-sex marriages formed in other states, even if legally formed within those states. Of course, at first that would be uncomfortably inconvenient to many gay couples in prohibiton states, but over not very much time there would be a sufficient flood of gay couples married in states where such marriages can be legally formed, moving to states where such marriages cannot (but where post-decision their status cannot be rejected if legally formed elsewhere) that “prohibition” states would be forced to actively accomodate their legality with respect to benefits, etc. In the end, the net result would be to turn prohibitions into dead letters within a decade or less.
IMHO it’s MUCH more likely that a 5-4 SCOTUS majority can be cobbled together on the full faith and credit issue than on the equal protection issue, barring unexpected change in the conservative wing’s personnel within the next few months. I’m not hereby dismissing what (should be) the strength of the equal protection argument, but rather simply doing some practical handicapping of the court we have rather than the court we ought to have.
Bob
Great choice for the lyrics!
Schlemizel
@cmorenc:
Will it join “Dred Scott” in the pantheon of great USSC decisions?
Calouste
One of the judges that sacrificed their sleep to make the midnight weddings possible goes by the rather appropriate name of Mary Yu.
cmorenc
@Schlemizel:
Again, the analysis I made was not what *ought* to be the broader basis for the upcoming SCOTUS decision, but rather simply observing that a split decision on the equal protection vs full faith and credit issues is a highly plausible outcome from this particular court, and that such an outcome would (while disappointing) nonetheless in the end, effectively undermine the prohibitions against gay marriage that have been erected in many states.
Brachiator
A slight amendment to a famous speech:
I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they build, and marrying the people they love – I’ll be there, too
Tom Joad’s final speech
Full Metal Wingnut
That’s what you get when the Supreme Court upholds the Individual Man Date.
Full Metal Wingnut
@cmorenc: well, much as I want to see ssm, full faith and credit isn’t absolute. There is some credence to the constitutional theory that the Congress can delineate how full and faithful said credit must be (as seen in Section 2 of DOMA, which I don’t think is at issue in these cases, is it?
BonnyAnne
@scav:
there was a party at the Post Office? Awwwww, I missed it. But I got to go to an awesome wedding yesterday anyways. Oh well.
Comrade Dread
Wait, that can’t be right.
My marriage is still fine. My cat isn’t humping my dog. And my kids aren’t being exposed to hardcore gay porn in their classrooms. And my church hasn’t been forced to replace the pastor with a drag queen.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
I would not hang my hat too much on the full faith and credit clause. If you read the whole thing, it also says “the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.” A lawyer who wanted to deny the applicability of the full faith and credit clause to marriage equality could say that DOMA is spelling out the “effect thereof” and therefor is specifically within Congress’s authority. I assume there are some pre-Loving rulings on differing state marriage laws that could be mined for justification for one state ignoring another state’s marriage laws. And, of course, the full faith and credit issue doesn’t apply at all to federal recognition of state recognition of gay marriage; that one has to be argued as an equal protection issue.
Yutsano
@Calouste: Heh. One might think she volunteered for this just for that reason.
Full Metal Wingnut
@Roger Moore: I’m also fairly certain that it’s not at issue in the DOMA case, section 3 is (defining spouse and marriage for federal purposes). There’s also an interesting separation of power argument to be made (a group from a single house of Congress performing what’s really an executive function-defending a federal law in court).
By the way, remind your teahadi friends and relatives that upholding and defending the constitution isn’t the sole province of the courts. Every single member of Congress and President takes an oath to the constitution.
YellowJournalism
These pictures really made my day when I first saw them. I really love my home state right now. I wonder what the freak out is in my hometown, though!
JustAnotherBob
@Comrade Dread: Sympathy extended re: that pastor problem….
Roger Moore
@Comrade Dread:
You would hope that the people who predicted that marriage equality would destroy the country would lose some credibility when their predictions turn out completely wrong. Yeah, I know; when have wrong predictions caused anyone to lose credibility?
Don
@Roger Moore: Ya know I wonder… we know that the drug prohibitionists were harming their case by overstating the issues with smoking weed. Have the gay haters done the same thing? Maybe if they hadn’t been so over the top the kids – who we know are leaps and bounds more accepting than folks just 15 years older – wouldn’t have become so “meh” about homosexuality.
Grod I hope so. I love it when scum is harmed by their own bad behavior. Plus it would be the tiniest of salves for the harm their vitriol has caused over the years to know it was making them fail even faster.
Calouste
@Comrade Dread:
Everything in good time…
So which one of those is your priority?
Calouste
@Roger Moore:
Is Dick Morris still on TV, and by that I mean not as part of the cast of the reality TV show “Do you want fries with that?”?
If so, the answer to your question is “Never”.