Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal Everywhere In The US

An old man walks, with some trepidation, into an old house.

It's dark, there's lots of dust and the floors creak with each step he takes.  But he' not really worried (or so he tells himself) until he hears:

Boooo.... I am the spi-rit...of same-sex marriage...Woooo!

The old man screams:  Oh, no!  There goes the threat to our democracy.

Now, of course, neither that house nor that ghost exists---except, of course, in the fantasies of that old man.

And who is that old man?, you ask.

Why, he's none other than our good friend Antonin Scalia.

Yes, that Antonin Scalia.  The one who's been on the Supreme Court for nearly three decades.  

Now, to be fair, he didn't specifically say that same-sex marriage is the threat.  Rather, he blasted the Supreme Court--or, more specifically, five members of it. In calling them the threat to democracy, he probably came as close as he could to saying that he's against same-sex marriage without saying it.  He's like all of those people who say "states' rights" as a code phrase for their opposition to laws protecting racial equality.

Those five judges--Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the opinion), Stephen Beyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan--marriage is a right of all same-sex couples, regardless of where in the United States they live.  The other four judges--Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas--each wrote their own dissenting opinions.

From the tone of this, you can tell that I'm pleased with the ruling. However, I still don't believe that granting same-sex marriage rights is the best solution.  I believe that, ideally, governments should have nothing at all to do with marriage other than to set a minimum age.  I also don't believe that religious institutions should be vested with the power of marriage.  If people want to have ceremonies in their houses of worship or prayer or whatever, that is fine.  But such a ceremony shouldn't legalize a person's union.  I'm no Constitutional lawyer or scholar, but it seems to me that the situation I've described--i.e., the one we have--conflicts with the Constitutional separation of church and state. Today's ruling does nothing to change that.

Still, though, today's decision is better than second-class citizenship, which is what too many same-sex couples now have.
 
 

The High Cost Of Marriage Inequality

Even though same-sex marriage is legal in the vast majority of US States, in most of those states, there are groups and individuals who are trying to have bans against same-sex marriage reinstated.  I hope they don't succeed, but we can't assume that they won't.

That's why it's still relevant to talk about how unfair bans against same-sex marriage are.  What most people don't realize is the economic injustice of marriage inequality:

Banning The Ban In The Beaver State

As a general rule, I guard against complacency.  Still, it's hard to greet one piece of news as if it's becoming almost routine.

Today, US District Judge Michael McShane struck down Oregon's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, saying that it's unconstitutional.  County clerks all over the Beaver State said they were ready to issue marriage licenses, and it didn't take long for Laurie Brown and Julie Engbloom to form the line for marriage licenses at Multnomah County court.

Oregon becomes the eighth state in which a Federal judge struck down a same-sex marriage ban on Constitutional grounds during the past year.  Things have gotten so that Judge McShane's ruling can't be dismissed over the fact that he's openly gay:  Earlier this year, in Utah, a conservative Republican judge (Robert Shelby)  issued a similar ruling.  It has been appealed, as McShane's ruling is likely to be. 

But the fact that bans can be appealed by such disparate judges means, I believe, that we'll see similar developments in other states.  Common wisdom used to tell us that same-sex marriage would become legal because more and more legislators--even ones as far to the right as Dick Cheyney--realize they have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbors, friends and co-workers in the LGBT spectrum.  Such awareness has certainly helped, as well as a younger generation who's more willing to accept sexual and gender-expression diversity. However, it seems to me that any jurist worthy of the title--let alone a Constitutional scholar--realizes that there is simply no Constitutional basis for a ban on same-sex marriage.  At least, my readings of the document, for what they're worth, tell me as much.

It looks, though, like opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage are going to be busy in the Beaver State, as they have been in the Beehive State and other places in this country.

Open To The Rainbow In The Ozarks?

They sure don't wast time in Arkansas!

Yesterday, Kristin Seaton and Jennifer Rambo exchanged vows in Eureka Springs--only a day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ruled the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

Judges in Utah, Virginia and other states have made similar rulings.  However, unlike them, Piazza didn't issue a stay.  That meant same-sex couples like Seaton and Rambo could get married right away.  In contrast, couples in other states had to wait several weeks for their judge's rulings to take effect.

Arkansas thus becomes the third Southern state, and the first of the Confederacy, to legalize gay marriage.  It also is now the first "Bible Belt" state to legalize same-sex unions. 

What may be as significant as the facts I've just mentioned is that prior to Piazza's ruling, Eureka Springs was the only incorporated place in Arkansas to allow domestic partnerships.  Other states, such as New York, legalized gay marriage after more than one municipality, or one very large city, made provisions for domestic partnerships.  

Of course, there will be challenges to Piazza's ruling, as Arkansas voters voted overwhelmingly for the ban on gay marriage.   Even the ruling is overturned, though, the battle is not lost:  Increasing numbers of same-sex couples are raising children outside the urban gay meccas on the two coasts, and some people who claim to live by "family values" will put their money where their mouths are and put aside their prejudices so that children in same-sex couples will have access to the same things as kids with married heterosexual parents.

 

Plus, if you ask me, Ms. Seaton and Ms. Rambo sure look good together. (And each of them looks good, period.) Southern belles, wouldn't you say?

 

LGBT People Leave The GOP. Why Should We Be Worried?

In January, GOProud co-founder Jimmy La Salvia defected from the Republican Party.  A lot of people wondered what took him so long to figure out the party is "brain dead" on LGBT and other issues.  They even wondered how he could remain "every bit as conservative as" he "ever was", in his own words.

Although I am registered as a Democrat--mostly for the same reasons he left the Republican Party--I can understand his position, and even agree with it to some degree.

What a lot of people missed is that he wasn't upset only about the Mike Huckabees and the Tim Santorums and all of the other homophobes who cloak their bigotry with a sham of religious belief and fealty to the "framers of the Constitution".  La Salvia, in his public exit statement, also slammed "big government 'conservatives' who have taken over the party".

Now, I am not one of those people who wants no government at all or, worse, anarcho-capitalism.  However, I also think that freedom is not achieved by passing more laws or starting new agencies. I like to think of myself as at least somewhat aligned with what I call the "conservative" side of Malcolm X, who said that African-Americans will be free from the effects of racism only through creating their own culture and economic enterprises, not by petitioning for it from a white ruling class.

While I am glad that there are laws against discrimination in employment, housing and such, and that more states are legalizing marriage equality, I think that we have to do more to determine our own destinies.  After all, there are always ways around laws:  A would-be employer could claim he or she didn't hire you for a variety of non-provable reasons.  (Some have flat-out lied, to me and others.)  And marriage "equality" still leaves the authority to determine who can marry and who can't with the same people and institutions that have discriminated against us.

I am mentioning all of this after seeing an article from the Los Angeles Times describing the "rift" that is developing within the Republican Party over LGBT equality.  Truth is, that "rift" is more like a purge:  Even though people might be leaving the party (or simply not voting for its candidates) on their own accord, they are, I believe, reacting to their perception that the hard-core social conservatives don't want them in the GOP.  

Such a development might not be so disturbing if those "conservatives" weren't so disingenuous and ruthless:  They rail against "Obamacare" as an example of "intrusive" government yet support massive military and "security" spending as well as any project or agency that will give cushy jobs to their campaign supporters.   And they will use any sort of smear tactic against the Edward Snowdens, Chelsea Mannings and others who are fighting against the Surveillance State, as well as to anyone else deemed a threat in any way.

(By the way, I have--and continue to be--against "Obamacare", though for reasons entirely different from those of the "conservatives" I've described.)

So, while some might think that the "rift" will blow up the party, I wonder whether the defections will turn the GOP into a fringe party, which would be far more dangerous than having them as a center-right party that gets between 45 and 55 percent of the vote.  Fringe parties and movements, while small, can be very dangerous because they often consist mainly of the angry, the scared and the otherwise unhinged.  It doesn't take very many of such people to create hysteria over some invented bogeyman:  That, to me, is the real lesson of the McCarthy era.  (Remember that Joe Mc Carthy waved his infamous "list" in front of a Republican Women's Club at a time when his party--the Republicans--lost the previous five Presidential elections and numerous Congressional seats, governorships and local elections.)   So, while I think that, ultimately, legal same-sex marriage will eventually be the norm, if not ubiquitous, the fight will become nastier and more vicious as the right loses its LGBT allies.

I Am A White Supremacitst. And I Am Very Thankful To Nevada For Letting Me Know.

Several people have given me plausible, sensible, cogent explanations of why the thought of legalizing same-sex marriage drives its foes to the most breathtaking contortions of logic.

In an earlier post, and in a Huffington Post article, I mentioned the "diversity" argument used by opponents of marriage equality in Utah.  They cited the fact that colleges and universities use diversity as a criterion in admissions.  Academic institutions have such policies because activists pointed out that some schools had monochromatic student bodies from the same social classes--and, in some cases, the same geographic areas.  Also, studies over the past half-century or so indicate that students indeed learn more and better when at least some of their classmates are different from themselves.

It obviously follows, then, that kids are better off with two parents who are of different genders.  At least, that's the conclusion of those diligent folks in the Beehive State.

I guess one of Utah's neighbors simply could not be outdone.  So, from Nevada, we have yet another canard from the Bizarro world of people who simply can't stand the thought of Jane marrying Jill or John wedding James.  

We really should listen to the what golden minds from the Silver State said in a Ninth Circuit court hearing.  Are you ready for this? :

 White supremacists engrafted the anti-miscegenation rules onto the marriage institution — and thereby altered marriage from how it had existed at common law and throughout the millennia — to bend that institution into the new and foreign role of inculcating white supremacist doctrines into the consciousness of the people generally. Because of the profound teaching, forming, and transforming power that fundamental social institutions like marriage have over all of us, this evil strategy undoubtedly worked effectively for decades.

Question: Where does one see today a similar massive political effort to profoundly change the marriage institution in order to bend it into a new and foreign role, one in important ways at odds with its ancient and essential roles? Answer: The genderless marriage movement.

So let's see:  White supremacists "engrafted anti-miscegenation rules onto the marriage institution."  (Gotta love that phrase!)  White supremacists changed the definition of marriage.  Gays want to do the same. Ergo, those who want same-sex marriages are no different from white supremacists.

Now, I'll grant you there are white supremacists, as well as bigots of every other kind, who happen to be gay men, lesbians, transgenders, bisexuals or of just about any other kind of sexual or gender identity you can imagine.  If nothing else, most at least have enough fashion sense not to wear white robes and hoods. (Most white people don't look good in white.  I include myself.)  But, seriously, I think that there are fewer such extreme haters in the "spectrum" in which I include myself.  Most of us still have unconscious prejudices, as nearly everyone else has, simply from being inculcated with subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) stereotypical notions about the sorts of jobs people are supposed to have, the clothes they're expected to wear and the foods they should eat, depending on their race, gender, geographical location or any number of other factors.

Still, I have yet to hear even the most racist, classist, misogynist, misandropic or even homo- or trans-phobic (Yes, we have those!) in our midst suggest that we pass laws to keep people from marrying each other.  Like most right-thinking people, most of us support only one restriction on marriage:  a minimum age.

Now, I have never been to law school. I entertained the thought of going for, oh, maybe fifteen minutes of my life. So forgive me if I am missing something.  I simply cannot understand how anyone can use laws that were used to keep people from marrying each other to rationalize his or her opposition to a law that would allow people to marry.  Moreover, I don't get how anyone can use a law that kept people who were of different races from hooking up to oppose a law that would allow two folks who are the same, in at least one way, from getting hitched.

Maybe I'm just too East Coast-centric to understand the dazzling feats of logic they've achieved in Utah and Nevada.  Or, perhaps, I'm too European in my outlook (After all, I've lived in France!) to understand how real Amurrikkkuns do things.  Or, perhaps, I have misunderstood every thinker and writer I've ever read.  Yes, it's been some time since I've read Descartes or Hegel or Kant. So, perhaps, I need to refresh my skills in logical thinking.

Or it may be that I just haven't spent enough time in Nevada to see how marriage is supposed to be.  Growing up in the dystopias of Brooklyn and New Jersey, all I ever saw were people who were married in churches, synagogues and by justices of the peace, and who remained together.  Such couples include my parents.  They have been Mr. and Mrs. for one year longer than I have been on this planet.  I blame them for setting such an example for me, their firstborn.

I mean, if I haven't been around folks whose nupitals were witnessed by slot machines, how can I possibly know what marriage is.  Right?  I didn't grow up in a place (or time) where Dennis Rodman wed Carmen Electra or Kim Kardashian tied the knot with Kris Humphries.  I never saw or heard about such perfect unions as the one between Jason Alexander and Britney Spears.  Never having the benefit of having grown up around such fine examples of matrimony, I guess I'm unduly impressed with two women of my acquaintance who've been together since 1971.  Or my parents.

Yes, I admit, I want to hijack the august institution of male masters and female chattel so that folks like my friends can have the same rights as my parents.  Or--now I'll expose my self-interest--so that I can enjoy those same rights, if I decide to marry a woman (or, for that matter, a man).  

I guess that makes me no better than the white supremacists.  As we say in the old country, tant pis.


 

Beside Themselves

A friend of mine read the article I posted the other day.  She was involved in the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State.  Several years before that legislation passed, she was married to her longtime partner in Canada.

This friend and I were talking about what’s happened in Utah, and about civil rights in general.  She reminded me of something which—surprisingly, given that the legislation in New York passed only two and half years ago—I had forgotten.

Here it is:  One of the arguments made against passing the same-sex marriage law was that it would discriminate against straight people, as it would not guarantee their right to marry gay people.

I wondered what it is about same-sex marriage that drives supposedly well-trained and talented legal minds to such contortions of logic as the one she recalled-- or the argument, made by same-sex marriage foes in Utah, that if diversity is a valid criterion for college admissions, it should also be a criterion in deciding whether or not people should be allowed to marry.

My friend had an explanation:  When people who don’t have much else, they will grasp onto whatever it is that (at least in their minds) separates them from people who are even lower on the socioeconomic ladder than they are.  Politicians like George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan exploited this; folks like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are trying to do the same.  How else can they consider poor and working-class white people in the South and Midwest to vote for candidates like themselves:  the ones who align themselves with the plutocrats who imperil whatever separates those white people from the perpetually destitute blacks and other members of “minority” groups.

It sounds, to me, like a good explanation of why, in spite of the gains we’ve made, the condition of transgender people is still like that of gays and lesbians thirty years ago.

Stirring Up A Hornet's Nest In The Beehive State?

If you are anything like me, you probably never expected to use "Utah" and "same-sex marriage" in the same sentence.

But it looks like we may have to get used to such a locution.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, a court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage.  Since then, hundreds of couples--most of them in Salt Lake City--have exchanged vows.

Meanwhile, the state has appealed Judge Robert Shelby's decision to the US Supreme Court.  The Beehive State's (With a name like that, the state wants to ban gay marriage?  Who do they think does all of those beehives?;-)) lawyers have argued that Judge Shelby--who, by the way, is a conservative Republican-- in essence, created a Constitutional right by ruling that the ban violated Federal guarantees of equal protection. In response, according to lawyer Peggy Tomic, advocates of same-sex marriage have filed papers in the Supreme Court in which they argue, in essence, that gay people aren't harming anyone by getting married in Utah.

Even if the Supreme Court grants the appeal--which, I believe, seems unlikely--it will still be something of a surprise to provincial New Yorkers like me that same-sex marriages ever took place in Utah.  But, as I've done some research, this turn of jurisprudence seems less surprising. After all, seemingly-conservative and mainly-rural Iowa legalized same-sex marriage a couple of years ago.  I know of Iowa only from acquaintances who hail from there; from their accounts, Iowans are "tolerant" and are taught to "mind their own business".  If that;s the case, then they are not so different--at least in that respect--from Vermonters, who surprised almost no one when they legalized same-sex marriage in their state.

But another fact makes recent events in Utah less surprising than they initially seemed.  According to at least one report, Salt Lake City has a higher percentage of its gay couples raising children than any other large city in the United States. Other cities near the top of that list include Virgina Beach, Detroit and Memphis.  

One reason why cities (with the possible exception of Detroit) that have such high proportions of gay couples raising children are located in socially conservative states may well be the social conservativism in such places.  It results in people coming out later in life and, often, entering into heterosexual marriages and having kids along the way.  Also, I think social conservatives lose, interestingly, some of their objection to gay marriage if not "the gay lifestyle" when they see gay couples raising kids. Seeing gay couples with kids is, perhaps, more palatable to some people than seeing images of  young, single gays leading seemingly-hedonistic lives in Chelsea or Castro.

Also, people in socially conservative places value order.  I think now of a Dutch minister who explained that his country's history of Calvinism is the very reason why marijuana and other drugs are legal in Amsterdam.  Legalizing something means regulating it.  It also means that people won't have to follow their proclivities "in the shadows" and resort to illegal means.  If you legalize pot, people don't have to support criminals in order to buy it; if you legalize gay marriage (and, indeed, almost anything else that goes along with homosexuality or queerness), there is less business for seedy bars and unscrupulous purveyors of pornography and sexual paraphernalia.   

Of course, if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling of a conservative Republican judge in what has been regarded as one of the most socially conservative states to strike down his state's ban on gay marriage, other states and jurisdictions will have less reason  to hold to bar such unions.  

That said, I still think that same-sex marriage is not the ne plus ultra of equal rights legislation for LGBT people.  I still believe that government should not have any say in marriage at all, save for setting a minimum age limit.  Everyone who wants to wed should, in the eyes of government, have the equivalent of a civil union, and couples could enshrine their marriages in their churches or other places of worship if they so wish.  And, finally, I think there should not be any tax benefits for any married couple, whether they are hetero- or same-sex.  But, given the legal and social systems we have, legalizing same-sex marriage is the best way to ensure that two men or two women have the same rights as a man and a woman.

(Now that Utah, in essence, allows same-sex marriage, at least one wag is wondering whether same-sex polygamy or polyandry will also be legal. In my own unbiased opinion, I think that there's a lot less reason to worry about gay marriage than about polygamy!)

A Geography Of Same-Sex Households

Now that Hawaii is about to become the 15th state to legalize same-sex marriage, I thought it would be interesting to post a map of same-sex households in the US:

 

Marriage De Meme N'est Pas DIsponible Pour Tous

Aujourd'hui, c'est la fete nationale francaise:  le jour de la prise de la Bastille.

If any Francophones or Francophiles are reading this, I apologize that I don't have diacritical marks on my keyboard!

Anyway, I am happy that in May, France became the fourteenth (how appropriate!) nation to legalize same-sex marriage.  Although I still think that no government should have any role in defining marriage or determining who is married (save, perhaps, for setting a minimum age limit), and that no tax or other benefits should be accorded to married couples, I think that allowing same-sex marriage is the best we can hope for in most countries.

Still, as in just about any jurisdiction that has legalized same-sex marriage, there are complications that come with France's new policy. As in most other places that sanctify same-sex unions, the complications have to do with marriage laws in other places.

Nationals of Poland, Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Cambodia, Laos, Tunisia and Algeria are not covered under France's new same-sex marriage law.  So, if someone from one of those countries wanted to marry a same-sex French partner, he or she could not do so in France.  If such a couple were to marry elsewhere--say, in neighboring Belgium--their union would not be considered legal in France.

The situation stems from agreements France signed with those countries--in some cases, during the 1950's and 1960's--that said, in essence, natives of those countries could not marry in France if their unions would not be legal in their home countries.  Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco were French colonies and, like Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, have Muslim majorities or pluralities.  (The latter three countries were part of the former Yugoslavia.) Cambodia and Laos are also former colonies, while Poland--traditionally an ally of France--has long been one of the most resolutely and conservatively Roman Catholic nations.

On 29 May, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira signed a memo affirming that natives of those countries cannot enter same-sex marriages in France.  As one might expect, LGBT and human-rights groups are working to repeal the decree Taubira signed.