Gay Marriage - DOMA, 14th Amendment & Supreme Court | HISTORY

Contents:

• WHY THE BATTLE FOR GAY MARRIAGE WAS WON SO EASILY
• GAY MARRIAGE
• TEXAS JUDGE FIGHTS TO NY WEDDG CEREMONI TO GAY UPL
• LBIAN ACTIVIST’S SURPRISGLY CANDID SPEECH: GAY MARRIAGE FIGHT IS A ‘LIE’ TO DTROY MARRIAGE
• THE GAY MARRIAGE FIGHT ISN’T OVER
• GAY MARRIAGE FIGHTS OM FOUR US STAT SET FOR FERAL URT HEARG
• TEXAS JUDGE WHO DON'T WANT TO PERFORM GAY MARRIAGE CEREMONI HOP WEB SIGNER'S SUPREME COURT SE HELPS HER FIGHT
• GAY MARRIAGE AND CULTURAL NFLICT
• HOW THE FIGHT TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE THE U.S. WAS KICKSTARTED BY A PR STUNT HAWAII

WHY THE BATTLE FOR GAY MARRIAGE WAS WON SO EASILY

What if the fg gay rights mand of the past generatn had not been equal marriage rights but an affirmative-actn program for employment areas — say, the feral ernment — where gay men and lbians had suffered historic discrimatn?

GAY MARRIAGE

Even as nservativ fight for relig-liberty exemptns om the new norms around same-sex marriage, such as those the Supreme Court is nsirg a challenge om a Catholic social-servic agency that ref to place foster children gay fai, they’ve effectively nced feat the broar war over the earlier civil rights projects to which the qut for marriage equaly was often pared — notably, for women’s sufage and racial segregatn — not only took much longer to reach their goals but also appeared to leave a ridue of unrolved nflict even after the nstutnal issu were settled. In the sprg of 1996, Whe Hoe talkg pots on the topic — which Print Bill Clton personally approved — argued that the print “do not believe is appropriate for srce feral rourc to be voted to providg spoal benefs to partners gay and lbian relatnships.

In pretrial statements, the state attorney general’s office dned a range of potential ratnal: that Hawaii thori had an tert ensurg that the state’s legal relatnships were regnized other jurisdictns; that the state had an tert furtherg procreatn wh marriage; that heterosexual marriag were better for children; that the islands’ tourist enomy uld suffer if Hawaii beme Lake Tahoe for gay and lbian none of the ratnal managed to persua judg — eher Hawaii or subsequent succsful challeng to marriage laws Vermont, Massachetts, Connecticut, California and Iowa. ” But afterward, even the most cynil observers of events Massachetts and the stat that followed s lead uld not pot to any societal y that gay marriage both the legal and polil spher, opponents were forced to shrk the circle of those expected to feel direct harm om lettg gay men and lbians marry.

TEXAS JUDGE FIGHTS TO NY WEDDG CEREMONI TO GAY UPL

Even if simple exposure to gay fai ed harm to children (and gay-marriage opponents uld never mter anythg beyond njecture to support that claim), they did not brg much to the fight agast same-sex marriage as voters, donors or the same time, the aln of those vted legalizg same-sex marriage not only broaned, but their vtment the oute epened. This clud not jt gay upl who wanted to marry — drawn to the unique material benefs and symbolic power the stutn offered — but their fai and muni who saw marriage as a source of stabily, and even employers who wanted to synchronize their benefs wh the law and standardize them across state l.

Bakke, which upheld affirmative-actn was an accint of history, talyzed by lol events Hawaii, that marriage equaly rose to the top of the gay rights agenda at the start of this century.

Or what if each state had only a set number of marriage licens to give out each year, and each time one went to a gay uple, a straight uple had to wa? That gay marriage would bee legal after only a twenty-five-year fight, Issenberg wr, “was beyond the wilst hop of gay-rights activists jt years before. Durg our nversatn, which has been eded for length and clary, we discsed what ma the stggle for gay marriage distct om other civil-rights movements, how Tmp’s electn shifted the foc of social nservatism away om sexual polics, and what this fight n tell about future civil-rights is the stggle for gay marriage Ameri different om other stggl for civil rights Amerin history?

LBIAN ACTIVIST’S SURPRISGLY CANDID SPEECH: GAY MARRIAGE FIGHT IS A ‘LIE’ TO DTROY MARRIAGE

And one sential element is that, unlike race and genr, people generally have the abily to ntrol the circumstanc unr which they acknowledge and disclose the fact that they are gay or lbian.

And so the procs of g out, which is the unrlyg social enge of a lot of the opn change that leads to polil and legal victori, is somethg that’s available to members of the gay and lbian muny that is not available to Ain-Amerins or to women, their I still n’t ci whether this is a profound observatn or a banal one, but most gay people are born to straight people—which means that they are, one prum, evenly distributed across the populatn, which is to say that they’re not geographilly ncentrated, that the likelihood of anybody the untry g to know somebody as a neighbor or a fay member or a classmate who’s gay or lbian is probably more or ls equally distributed.

And we’ve seen across gay-rights issu, not jt marriage, that the bt predictor of liberal attus has always been how somebody answers the qutn “Do you have a iend, fay member, or -worker who’s gay or lbian?

THE GAY MARRIAGE FIGHT ISN’T OVER

That people get some gree of cultural or social acceptance, then feel fortable g out, and then the people around them regnize that they know somebody who’s gay or lbian.

GAY MARRIAGE FIGHTS OM FOUR US STAT SET FOR FERAL URT HEARG

I mean, I thk that this is someplace where wrg about marriage is different than wrg about the entirety of the gay-rights movement.

TEXAS JUDGE WHO DON'T WANT TO PERFORM GAY MARRIAGE CEREMONI HOP WEB SIGNER'S SUPREME COURT SE HELPS HER FIGHT

There was a much longer perd of the broar qut for equal rights for gays and lbians, when activists were operatg whout much acknowledgment om, reactn om, and teractn wh the polil class or stutns. And so I thk when people have wrten histori of gay activism the neteen-fifti or sixti or seventi, there are far fewer policians or judg there. But one of the tertg thgs about your book, I thought, was that a way you’re sayg that the backlash to gay marriage helped the gay-marriage e, or phed along.

So, the mid-neteen-neti, anti-gay activists on the maland who rpond to this urt cisn Hawaii end up unifyg a gay-rights movement that had been unvted marriage as a e and actured iologilly over as a strategic proposn—over the tra-offs, terms of cremental gas that would have to be put asi the qut for marriage rights.

And, all of a sudn, some gay-rights activists who had been prcipled opponents of seekg marriage ci that, bee their opponents want to ny them that right, they feel basilly obliged to fight for ’s not a bad argument, right?

GAY MARRIAGE AND CULTURAL NFLICT

And gays and lbians and bisexuals and transgenr people were a aln, and their opponents cid that what was wh that aln had been a niche issue but was now gog to be the primary area which they were gog to fight. Early Years: Same-Sex Marriage Bans In 1970, jt one year after the historic Stonewall Rts that galvanized the gay rights movement, law stunt Richard Baker and librarian Jam McConnell applied for a marriage license Gerald Nelson rejected their applitn bee they were a same-sex uple, and a trial urt upheld his cisn.

HOW THE FIGHT TO LEGALIZE GAY MARRIAGE THE U.S. WAS KICKSTARTED BY A PR STUNT HAWAII

” This lg effectively blocked feral urts om lg on same-sex marriage for s, leavg the cisn solely the hands of stat, which alt blow after blow to those hopg to see gay marriage beg 1973, for stance, Maryland beme the first state to create a law that explicly f marriage as a unn between a man and woman, a belief held by many nservative relig groups.

Though the gay rights movement saw some advancements the 1970s and 1980s—such as Harvey Milk beg the first openly gay man elected to public office the untry 1977—the fight for gay marriage ma ltle headway for many years.