elrhiarhodan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elrhiarhodan) wrote2015-06-26 10:36 am
elrhiarhodan) wrote2015-06-26 10:36 am
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SCOTUS Decision - Equal Marriage is a Right
Marriage equality is now the law of the land!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From Justice Kennedy's decision:
It should be noted with great joy that this decision comes forty-six years, less two days, after the Stonewall Riots started the Gay Rights Movement.
"Stonewall Inn 1969" by Diana Davies, copyright owned by New York Public Library
Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Photo, circa September, 1969: The sign in the window reads: The sign in the window reads: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village.
From the New York Times
In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more liberal justices.
The decision, the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of same-sex marriage.
As in earlier civil rights cases, the Supreme Court had moved cautiously and methodically, laying careful judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.
As late as October, the justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, up from 19.
Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.
The court did not agree to resolve the issue for the rest of the nation until January, in cases filed by gay and lesbian couples in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The court heard extended arguments in April, and the justices seemed sharply divided over what the Constitution has to say about same-sex marriage.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said their clients had a fundamental right to marry and to equal protection, adding that the bans they challenged demeaned their dignity, imposed countless practical difficulties and inflicted particular harm on their children.
The Obama administration, which had gradually come to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, was unequivocal in urging the justices to rule for the plaintiffs.
“Gay and lesbian people are equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said. “They deserve equal protection of the laws, and they deserve it now.”
The Supreme Court had once before agreed to hear a case arising from a constitutional challenge to a same-sex marriage ban, California’s Proposition 8, in 2012 in Hollingsworth v. Perry. At the time, nine states and the District of Columbia allowed same-sex couples to marry.
But when the court’s ruling arrived in June 2013, the justices ducked, with a majority saying the case was not properly before them, and none of them expressing a view on the ultimate question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex marriage.
A second decision the same day, in United States v. Windsor, provided the movement for same-sex marriage with what turned out to be a powerful tailwind. The decision struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred federal benefits for same-sex couples married in states that allowed such unions.
The Windsor decision was based partly on federalism grounds, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion stressing that state decisions on how to treat marriages deserved respect. But lower courts focused on other parts of his opinion, ones that emphasized the dignity of gay relationships and the harm that families of gay couples suffered from bans on same-sex marriage.
In a remarkable and largely unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the Windsor decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
From Justice Kennedy's decision:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
It should be noted with great joy that this decision comes forty-six years, less two days, after the Stonewall Riots started the Gay Rights Movement.
"Stonewall Inn 1969" by Diana Davies, copyright owned by New York Public Library
Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Photo, circa September, 1969: The sign in the window reads: The sign in the window reads: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village.
From the New York Times
In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more liberal justices.
The decision, the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of same-sex marriage.
As in earlier civil rights cases, the Supreme Court had moved cautiously and methodically, laying careful judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.
As late as October, the justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, up from 19.
Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.
The court did not agree to resolve the issue for the rest of the nation until January, in cases filed by gay and lesbian couples in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The court heard extended arguments in April, and the justices seemed sharply divided over what the Constitution has to say about same-sex marriage.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said their clients had a fundamental right to marry and to equal protection, adding that the bans they challenged demeaned their dignity, imposed countless practical difficulties and inflicted particular harm on their children.
The Obama administration, which had gradually come to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, was unequivocal in urging the justices to rule for the plaintiffs.
“Gay and lesbian people are equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said. “They deserve equal protection of the laws, and they deserve it now.”
The Supreme Court had once before agreed to hear a case arising from a constitutional challenge to a same-sex marriage ban, California’s Proposition 8, in 2012 in Hollingsworth v. Perry. At the time, nine states and the District of Columbia allowed same-sex couples to marry.
But when the court’s ruling arrived in June 2013, the justices ducked, with a majority saying the case was not properly before them, and none of them expressing a view on the ultimate question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex marriage.
A second decision the same day, in United States v. Windsor, provided the movement for same-sex marriage with what turned out to be a powerful tailwind. The decision struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred federal benefits for same-sex couples married in states that allowed such unions.
The Windsor decision was based partly on federalism grounds, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion stressing that state decisions on how to treat marriages deserved respect. But lower courts focused on other parts of his opinion, ones that emphasized the dignity of gay relationships and the harm that families of gay couples suffered from bans on same-sex marriage.
In a remarkable and largely unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the Windsor decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
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I'm pretty sure Anton's head is going to explode in short order, which would be another win for our side.
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And, after yesterday's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, I'm waiting to hear of Scalia's myocardial infarction.
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And it's the anniversary of the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas that laws banning same-sex sexual activity are unconstitutional.
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/24/remembering-the-upstairs-lounge-the-u-s-a-s-largest-lgbt-massacre-happened-40-years-ago-today/#st_refDomain=m.facebook.com&st_refQuery=
I cannot love that past paragraph of the ruling any more than I already do. I am thrilled beyond words!!!
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I posted a picture of the last paragraph of the ruling on my Facebook page. It almost made me cry.
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Do you dip?
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My government, in its infinite wisdom, decided yet again that matrimony is only holy when it is between a man and a woman. Gays and lesbians? Are already allowed to enter a civil union and should be damn grateful for that, period. (Never mind that they don't get the same tax breaks, have the same health insurance rights, can't adopt kids, etc.)
And no, there will be no overturning of this ridiculous law by our Supreme Court, as they argue that our constitution clearly sets apart marriage between a man and a woman from any other union, and since the holy matrimony is specifically protected by law, it is not against equality rights to give the man/woman union special treatment.
*fumes*
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