decision<\/a><\/strong>, though an instant landmark in American legal history, is more than that. It also is a stirring and eloquently reasoned denunciation of all forms of irrational discrimination, the latest link in a chain of pathbreaking decisions that permitted interracial marriages and decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults…<\/p>\nThe judge easily dismissed the idea that discrimination is permissible if a majority of voters approve it; the referendum’s outcome was “irrelevant,” he said, quoting a 1943 case, because “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.” He then dismantled, brick by crumbling brick, the weak case made by supporters of Proposition 8 and laid out the facts presented in testimony. The two witnesses called by the supporters (the state having bowed out of the case) had no credibility, he said, and presented no evidence that same-sex marriage harmed society or the institution of marriage…\t\t<\/p>\n
The real reason for Proposition 8, he wrote, is a moral view “that there is something wrong with same-sex couples,” and that is not a permissible reason for legislation. “Moral disapproval alone,” he wrote, in words that could someday help change history, “is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women”…<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\nJust as they did for racial equality in previous decades, the moment has arrived for the federal courts to bestow full equality to millions of gay men and lesbians.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
For the last decade, we’ve lived in a place that I haven’t recognized as the America I grew up in. Even though I grew up in the segregated south, I was taught that segregation was wrong. And as the movement to right that wrong was gaining steam, then only real question was
when<\/em> would it get made right, not if<\/em> it would get made right. And when the Constitutional Amendment called the ERA Amendment failed, the question wasn’t about whether there would be equal rights for women. That would continue to happen. It was only about putting it in the Constitution over the objections of the dinosaurs. This issue has been different – the opposite. It was putting prejudice into<\/u> a Constitution. <\/div>\nBut for this first decade, we’ve been bludgeoned by a specific religious view that is unacceptable in this country. We were founded on the premise that we are all equal, "endowed by our Creator" as equal. But for this painful era, that was challenged in almost every election. To listen to the campaign ads, this country was only about Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Stem Cell research. Our "Creator" had been declared a bigot.<\/p>\n
So as glad as I am to hear that Judge Vaughn Walker affirmed the inclusion of our Gay Americans into our
country’s <\/em>equality <\/em> [not aliens]<\/em>, I’m glad that the decade of Jerry Falwell and James Dobson may finally be drifting into historical obscurity, and that our Creator is being restored to sanity…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marriage Is a Constitutional Right New York Times August 4, 2010 Until Wednesday, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married did so because a state judge or Legislature allowed them to. The nation’s most fundamental guarantees of freedom, set out in the Constitution, were not part of the equation. That has changed with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}