Just in case you didn’t know. I still cannot believe this is happening. It’s very good news, IMHO.
Cheers,
Phoenix
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BOSTON (Reuters) – Massachusetts sued the U.S. government on Wednesday to seek federal marriage benefits for about 16,000 gay and lesbian couples who have wed since the state became the nation’s first to legalize same-sex marriage.
The state is challenging the constitutionality of the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, saying it denies “essential rights and protections” to married gay couples. Read more... (150 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)
March 14, 2009 – 12:17 pm
This morning, with the court due to give it’s decision at any moment, I decided to do some further research and ran into this little gem. Don’t focus on the fact that it is for or against prop 8; the reason it’s important is his point that the court has been placed in an impossible position. And… he’s right; no matter how they choose, no matter what they decide, they are going to tick off people on both sides of the issue, and are going to be in constitutional hot water. They are in an impossible position, and I pity them!
As long as we’re discussing gay marriage, let’s bring up the Californian bombshell of Proposition 8.
Now, I’m not much of an activist, so I’ll ignore the obvious horror of homophobia. I’ll even ignore the legal contradiction that 18,000 people have been placed in, being engaged in legally recognized and valid homosexual marriage in a state that no longer recognizes homosexual marriages. (Mind you, that’s going to be a fun thing because the Supreme Court certainly appears to have more or less made up its mind that those marriages remain valid, regardless of whether or not prop 8 actually gets overturned. So we’ve got a really nice legal contradiction that someone, somewhere, can probably use as a chink in prop 8′s armor). Read more... (466 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)
