This is unexpected but fantastic news: just this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4, nullified a California ruling that restricted marriage to male-female couples and, at the same time, also struck down a federal law preventing legally married same-sex couples from getting federal benefits.
According to the New York Times:
In the California case, the court ruled that opponents of same-sex marriage did not have standing to appeal a a lower-court ruling that overturned California’s ban. The Supreme Court’s ruling appears to remove legal obstacles to same-sex couples marrying in the state, but the court did not issue a broad ruling likely to affect other states.
The decision on the federal law was 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion, which the four liberal-leaning justices joined.
“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts was in the minority, as were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The ruling overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed with bipartisan support and President Bill Clinton signed.
Justice Kennedy, in his opinion, wrote that the law was “unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
Thank Ceiling Cat for Kennedy, the swing vote! Of course all the conservatives want to reserve marriage for male-female couples. But there is no moral justification for that save the outmoded dicta of religion.
Things aren’t quite over yet, for, as the Times reports, “The court is still expected to rule Wednesday on a second case involving same-sex marriage: whether California’s ban on it is unconstitutional.”
That will be the real watershed ruling, and I hope, based on today’s decisions, that the justices will rule that gay marriage is indeed constitutional. If so, I’m betting the ruling will again be 5-4. Keep your fingers crossed. (If you’re against gay marriage, you need to be reading another website!)
This is indeed great news, though I think the whole institute of marriage is a religious relict. Personally I think it’s wrong to discriminate on marital status at all, such as fiscal benefits to marital couples. Married couples should have the same rights as singles and unwedded couples. A strong case can be made for the “de-institutionalisation” of marriage, i.e. the state should be no longer in the business of recognizing or registering marriages. If people want to have a wedding or similar ceremony, well go ahead, but they should not have to count on state recognition of their relationship.
Religious institutions hijacked marriage and call it there own. Back in the day, it was just two people agreeing to be married and whatever they felt that meant.
Commonlaw marriage is kind of “de-institutionalisation” I suppose.
Marriage was a cultural institution long before it was religious. Please try to read just a little bit of history before trying to comment on the issue.
Marriage has always been a cultural AND a religious institutions. In many early societies there was no clear cut distinction between religion and culture. For example the traditional religion of Japan, Shinto, did not have a name before the introduction of Buddhism in that area. Therefore saying that marriage had been a cultural institution before it was a religious institution, is a false reading of history.
Sounds to me like you’d be more comfortable over at the “odious blog”, where such condescension and bullying are encouraged.
I’ve considered the question of the state being involved in marriage, but I see the state’s involvement purely for legal reasons around property, custody etc. so the social aspect of marriage may be debatable but state legal protection should not be. In this way in makes complete sense that legal protection should apply to all couples regardless of gender.
Yeah, I know…my friends think I have no romance in me too. 😉
Exactly. Whatever you want to call them, consensual relationships between people who wish to share their lives together need some society wide rules in place to ensure the rights to each other’s property, and the authority to act on each other’s behalf that such relationships entail.
I can’t think of a single reason why any decent society would consider that a bad idea. This is just a small extension of the basic human rights that any society that could be considered decent subscribes to.
Now, providing certain financial advantages is another aspect of marriage, and I agree there are problems with that worthy of some debate. But those issues are hardly the defining aspect of marriage.
Even the financial advantage issues with marriage are not always clear cut. Many of the advantages are aimed at benefiting children, though of course they are abused by some. Is it really a bad thing to provide some benefit to a household to aid in raising a new member of society? I am not so sure it is. I think investing in a societies people by things like making it possible for everyone to receive healthcare and the highest level of education they are capable of, or want, is what we should strive for, because the return on investment is big.
Mordanicus, spot on. Why indeed should a married couple receive automatic fiscal advantages?!?
Diana, why should you not have to pay taxes on assets your wife or husband leaves you upon her/his passing, while I will have to pay on what my brother leaves me? Similarly the advantages accruing to married couples re federal benefits. What, to justify this discrimination, is so anointed or divine about marriage, that isn’t about the relationship I have with my brother; that they have sex?
I was going to reply but I think darrelle’s reply hits all the points I was going to mention.
Except that darrelle’s reply fails to provide a rational justification why a childless married couple should be advantaged financially by the state, where, say, siblings who live in the same household throughout adult hood raising an adopted child are denied the same advantages.
Darrelle asks: “Is it really a bad thing to provide some benefit to a household to aid in raising a new member of society?”
No it is not. But it is bad to discriminate against a household by depriving it of this aid because it does not contain individuals who have received the state certification of being “married”.
It is self-evident that favoring “marriage” for its own sake is no more rationally justifiable than denying gays the right to marry.
100% agreed.
& Glad over the ruling.
He did conceded, however, that it may not be fair in those circumstances. Maybe it’s not. Maybe that should change but for now since it’s an institution that we seem to want to have for social reasons, we can let everyone participate in it. If that institution has privilege that we think is unfair, that’s something we need to look at.
I see your “maybe it’s not(fair)” and raise you I’m glad with the ruling which I’d had hoped would be self evident in the first place.
I reject, however, your mild strawwomaning, insinuating that i’m disallowing anyone to participate in this or any other, in my opinion, silly ritual.
And, I reject your continued disingenuous hedging on recognizing that the institution arrogates priviledges to itself on the tepid basis of being an institution that “we seem to want to have for social reasons.”
“If that institution has privilege that we think is unfair, that’s something we need to look at.”
It does. It is. It’s not being looked at.
Precisely because in the rare instance that an individual is presented with a clear-cut example of how unjustifiable the privilege is we still get, let’s keep it at arm’s-length relativising.
Thanks for the exchange.
I reject, however, your mild strawwomaning, insinuating that i’m disallowing anyone to participate in this or any other, in my opinion, silly ritual.
Ummmm you brought that to the exchange, not me. I didn’t insinuate anything. I just stated what I thought. The straw womaning is cute though.
Also, I don’t know what you mean by this disingenuous hedging on recognizing that the institution arrogates priviledges to itself on the tepid basis of being an institution that “we seem to want to have for social reasons.”
I thought I was agreeing with you but if we’re going to get all upset, I reject you assuming I’m married, so there. 😛
Except that darrelle’s reply fails to provide a rational justification why a childless married couple should be advantaged financially by the state, where, say, siblings who live in the same household throughout adult hood raising an adopted child are denied the same advantages.
Marriage generally implies a long-standing social and economic commitment between individuals that provides benefits to society in general. So it makes sense for the government to provide benefits for marriage through law and public policy. There are also laws and policies that provide benefits to people raising children, whether they are single parents, a married couple, or siblings sharing a household and raising a child together.
And associated with that brilliant piece of filibustering by Wendy Davis in Texas, it has been a pretty good day all round.
Yes! The Wendy stuff was great and it was covered via social media much more than major news outlets like CNN!
According to HuffPo, Wendy Davis’ seat was saved by the Voting Rights Act. The SCOTUS ruling might be bad news for her. I hope not, I’d like to feel someone is representing my views even if she’s not in my district.
Social activism is everywhere… 🙂
Great news indeed.
What puzzles me though, is that something I consider an absolute correct decision still have so many of the justices going in the wrong direction. It’s like sanity can be voted on!
(I know, religion redefines sanity).
Yay! I have long wondered what the legal basis is for banning gay marriage. There is no opposition to gay marriage that isn’t based in religion (there might be a few fringe voices, but nothing with the power of the conservative Christians) and why such bans aren’t a constitutional violation is confusing. The Daily Show years ago had the most brilliant bit on gay marriage – am I allowed to link a video here?
Sure, why not–it’s a day to celebrate. Just paste the URL in and the video should appear.
Thank you! Here you go:
http://videosift.com/video/Daily-Show-Mass-Hysteria-neither-dead-nor-regionblocked
I love the “Yeah! Why do the research when saying it is so much easier” bit. LOL…everyone should watch this.
This is good news, indeed, and worth celebrating. And I will after I stop dry heaving from SCOTUS’ gutting of the Voting Rights Act yesterday.
Yeah, I don’t know what they expect a corrected law to look like but, they are punishing the victims and providing a feeding trough to the perpetrators.
Indeed.
This is great news but I am concern that we are going backwards when it comes to women’s issues. I live in Texas and I am very proud of Wendy Davis!
Note: parts of DOMA still stand, such as the fact that one state doesn’t have to recognize a gay couple as being married if they were married in another state.
And, of course, we still need to get gay marriage through the Illinois House.
I’m reading the right website!
Ha, ditto!
same here
Me too!
I think this calls for the hilarious mocking of Pat Buchanan’s stance against gay marriage with Garfunkle & Oates’s Sex with Ducks: http://youtu.be/EXPcBI4CJc8
Ooops I mean Robertson – wrong Pat.
screw that gas bag pat robertson and what he thinks
+1
That’s a fun video!
//
It’s not an unvarnished victory. As blueollie notes above, states do not have to recognize same sex marriage from other states and there are still a lot of questions about what happensnow with Prop 8:
http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=161966
But the over-the-top reaction to these rulings coming from the religious right is, I suspect, likely to fuel even more support for same sex marriage.
“states do not have to recognize same sex marriage from other states”
That section of DOMA was not challenged, so that wasn’t subject to being ruled on. But that section is an irrelevant bit of fluff in the law anyway, since states have always had the power to not recognize marriages from other states, whether it’s first cousins marrying or any other qualification they disagree on. The only way to force states to recognize a same sex marriage from another state is for the Supreme Court to declare all state laws and constitutional amendments that ban same sex marriages to be unconstitutional, the way they did with interracial marriage in Loving. That day will come, but not today.
I’m not a lawyer, and there’s a black hole where my knowledge should be about this:
“states do not have to recognize same sex marriage from other states”
Hasn’t it been established law that marriages performed in one state are valid in the other 49?
They are valid in the sense that you are still married and the federal government will recognize the marriage no matter where you live. However, a state does not have to recognize the marriage, for the purpose of state benefits to married couples and such. Fortunately, almost all benefits are federal, and same sex married couples qualify for them now. It can present headaches when filing state taxes, though.
For instance, this is from County Clerks’ Guide To Kentucky Marriage Law;
“Marriage between first cousins is prohibited by KRS 402.010. There are no exceptions to the prohibition and such a marriage is incestuous and void. Kentucky does not recognize such a marriage between first cousins even if it is consummated in another state.”
How they would know a couple was first cousins, I have no idea.
Now, will Sotomayor and Kennedy be excommunicated, I wonder?
This made me smile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1_1-gEb__o4
Couldn’t have put it better myself!
Good news yes, but back to the real news.Twinkies are coming back July 15th, can’t wait hope the chocolate cupcakes will also return.
The local press described it as one (of 2 different same-sex cases, I think) decision that would have international effects.
How so? What were their reasons?
Although many pretend otherwise, what happens in America is hugely influential in the world. The more fully American culture, law and politics embrace same-sex marriage, the more normalized it becomes.
A much narrower but more concrete international effect of the DOMA ruling is its implications for federal immigration law. No more discrimination against foreign same-sex spouses.
Actually it’s easy to cheer but the Prop 8 decision is dangerously bad law.
The court did NOT rule it unconstitutional, instead opened a dangerous precedent.
This is the problem. California, like some other states, has a mechanism for the people to go around the legislature through popular vote. This is what they did in CA, and for better or for worse, they DID win the popular vote. So anyhow the governor decides not to enforce the law and eventually not to defend the legally (at least at that point) created law. The SC then ruled that no one else has standing to defend a law if the governor chooses not to.
The whole point of the proposition construct to allow the voting public to sidestep the legislature when the state decides a law is inconvenient or undesirable to enforce. Essentially the court gutted the proposition mechanism.
It provided a short circuit victory for gay rights today, at the cost of democracy in the future.
‘So anyhow the governor decides not to enforce the law”
The law was enforced, same-sex marriages were stopped.
To be more accurate, in THIS case the law was initially enforced but the state refused to defend it. This is the problem.
Consider an environmental proposition, or civil liberties proposition that the state refuses to defend (or possibly enforce). What the SC essentially did here was to decide that if the state government was not behind the law, the citizens have no recourse through the federal courts.
The additional problem is that Prop 8 was NOT shot down for constitutional reasons so the court has refused to go there.
It wasn’t “initially” enforced, it was enforced, period. Enforcement was never an issue, I don’t know why you keep bringing it up. Just as with DOMA, the executive branch enforced the law but did not defend it in court. The Supreme Court kicked the case back to the last legal judgment of the case, Judge Walker’s finding that the law is unconstitutional and his injunction, “permanently enjoining its enforcement.” The law was defended in the District Court and found unconstitutional. I just don’t see the devastating blow to democracy that you envision.