Tag Archives | Gay Marriage

U.S. Supreme Court To Rule On Gay Marriage

By on November 25, 2012 in News 28

Will the Roberts-led Supreme Court dare to stop the gay marriage juggernaut? This may be the week we find out, per this report in the LA Times:

After two decades in which gay rights moved from the margin to capture the support of most Americans, the Supreme Court justices will go behind closed doors this week to decide whether now is the time to rule on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

For justices, the issue is not just what to decide, but when to decide it. In times past, the court has been faulted for waiting too long or moving too quickly to recognize constitutional rights.

The justices did not strike down state bans on interracial marriage until 1967, 13 years after they had declared racial segregation unconstitutional. Yet in response to the growing women’s rights movement, the court in 1973 struck down all the state laws restricting abortion, triggering a national “right to life” movement and drawing criticism even from some supporters that the Roe vs.

… Read the rest

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Sister Wives Will Get Their Day In Court, Maybe

By on August 23, 2012 in News 2

Picture: Creator Unknown (CC)

Welcome to the slippery slope, or so you might think. The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that polygamous TLC reality show performers Kody, Robyn, Christine, Meri, and Janelle Brown have successfully beat back Utah’s attempt to have their suit over the state’s anti-bigamy law tossed as non-justiciable:

Utah state attorneys argued the “Sister Wives” suit should be dismissed after a prosecutor pledged not to prosecute them for bigamy, but U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups disagreed. In his Friday ruling, Waddoups wrote that a new Utah County Attorney’s Office policy to avoid prosecuting consenting adult polygamists in the future seems to have been ploy to avoid the suit.

The “strategic attempt to use the mootness doctrine to evade review in this case draws into question the sincerity of [the Utah County Attorney’s]contention that prosecution of plaintiffs for violating this statute is unlikely to recur,” Waddoups wrote.

That means Judge Waddoups believes this case isn’t already moot.… Read the rest

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Gay Couples Can Marry But Are Wed-Locked With No Divorce In Some States

By on June 7, 2012 in News 8

Amidst all the sturm und drang over President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, few people realize that even when gay couples are allowed to marry, getting divorced can be a whole other (and much tougher) challenge. Elizabeth Landau reports for CNN:

…Same-sex couples can currently marry in six states and the District of Columbia, and there’s no residency requirement to marry. That means that couples who live outside of those states can just pop in for a day to get married and then go home. There are also five states that allow civil unions.

But if a marriage should fall apart in a state that doesn’t recognize the couple’s legal status in the first place, that’s when things get complicated.

Some states that do not allow same-sex marriages to be performed also do not grant divorces for same-sex marriages that occurred outside of the state’s borders. It’s a tricky situation when a couple wants to dissolve their same-sex marriage, and neither spouse is a resident of a state that recognizes their marriage as legal and valid.

… Read the rest

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When Gay Marriage Was A Christian Rite

By on May 17, 2012 in News 40

sergius_bacchus_7th_centuryWhen the conservative-minded say they favor a return to the traditional Christian definition of marriage, they might want to further explore what they mean by that. Via Irish Times:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The “husband and wife” are in fact two men.

The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a twelve year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual “marriage” did exist as late as the 18th century. Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved as a concept and as a ritual.

… Read the rest

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The Myth About Marriage

By on May 11, 2012 in News 7

Wedding At CanaVery interesting perspective from Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books given the current media circus regarding President Obama’s personal support of same-sex marriage:

Why do some people who would recognize gay civil unions oppose gay marriage? Certain religious groups want to deny gays the sacredeness of what they take to be a sacrament. But marriage is no sacrament.

Some of my fellow Catholics even think that “true marriage” was instituted by Christ. It wasn’t. Marriage is prescribed in Eden by YHWH (Yahweh) at Genesis 2.24: man and wife shall “become one flesh.” When Jesus is asked about marriage, he simply quotes that passage from Genesis (Mark 10.8). He nowhere claims to be laying a new foundation for a “Christian marriage” to replace the Yahwist institution.

Some try to make the wedding at Cana (John 1.1–11) somehow sacramental because Jesus worked his first miracle there. But that was clearly a Jewish wedding, like any other Jesus might have attended, and the miracle, by its superabundance of wine, is meant to show the disciples that the Messianic time has come.

… Read the rest

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Today’s the Worst Day for Mitt Romney’s High School Bullying Story to Come Out

By on May 10, 2012 in News 25

Young Mitt RomneyIs this why Obama chose yesterday to publicly support gay marriage? Elspeth Reeve writes at the Atlantic Wire:

What would be the worst possible news for Mitt Romney to have to deal with the day after President Obama announced he supports gay marriage? Romney’s already had a gay staffer resign because social conservatives were outraged he’d hire an openly gay person. And having a hypothetical family member come out as gay would probably help him seem more compassionate.

But one thing that might project an image Romney really wants to avoid — heartless outmoded anti-gay conservative — would be a long profile in The Washington Post about how he bullied a gay kid in high school. At the exact moment Romney doesn’t want to talk about gay stuff, the Post‘s Jason Horowitz reports Romney led a gang of boys who singled out a gay kid, held him down while he cried, and cut off the kid’s offensively un-hetero hair.

… Read the rest

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President Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal

By on May 9, 2012 in News 12
Proposition 8 Protest

Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

Half of Americans support same-sex marriage according to a recent poll. Reports Jackie Calmes and Peter Baker in the New York Times:

President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.

“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.

In an election that is all but certain to turn on the slowly recovering economy and its persistently high jobless rate, Mr. Obama’s stand nonetheless injects a volatile social issue into the campaign debate and puts him at even sharper odds with his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and favors an amendment to the United States Constitution to forbid it.

… Read the rest

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California Court Rules Gay-Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

By on February 7, 2012 in News 3

Prop 8And now the Supremes will decide. Via Reuters:

The U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals in San Francisco Tuesday upheld a lower court decision, which had declared unconstitutional California’s controversial Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage.

The matter is now expected to travel to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling, made by judges Stephen Reinhardt, Michael Daly Hawkins and Randy Smith — appointed by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush respectively — ruled on both the constitutionality of Prop 8 and whether the judge who struck down Prop 8 should have recused because he is gay. They heard oral arguments on the constitutionality question more than a year ago, and the recusal matter in December.

California voters agreed to Prop 8 — also known as the California Marriage Protection Act — in November 2008 by a 52 to 47 percent margin (approximately 13 million voters took part). That vote inserted language in the state constitution expressly allowing marriage only between a man and a woman.

… Read the rest

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New York State Passes Gay Marriage Bill

By on June 24, 2011 in News 14

NY MarriageReid J. Epstein writes in the Politico:

Striking what advocates believe is a historic victory for gay rights, the New York state senate Friday approved same-sex marriage, bringing New York a promised governor’s signature away from being the sixth and largest state to allow gays and lesbians to marry.

The 33–29 vote is an enormous victory for first-year Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged during last fall’s campaign to push for gay marriage. It comes after an intense public and private lobbying campaign from a wide cast of politicians, celebrities and athletes, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former President Bill Clinton.

Cuomo, whose two daughters attended the vote in the senate gallery, is expected to sign the bill. The bill will become law 30 days after Cuomo signs it, and when it does, it will double the population of Americans for whom same-sex marriage is legal.

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