marriage equality

by Jeremy Leaming

It’s hard to say why marriage matters, why it is different, Edie Windsor says in an ACLU video documenting her struggle to overcome the federal government’s discriminatory treatment of same-sex marriages. But, she continued, marriage is different and does matter. “It has to do with our dignity,” being able to be who we are openly, she said.

“It was a love affair that kept on and on and on,” Windsor said in describing her deep, loving and lasting connection to Thea Spyer. The couple, more than 40 years into their relationship and after Spyer received a dire diagnosis related to multiple sclerosis, were married in Canada. When Spyer died in 2007, Windsor was required to pay inheritance taxes since the federal government because of the Clinton era law, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, does not recognize same-sex marriages. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edie lodged a lawsuit against DOMA arguing, in part, that it violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

In the fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Windsor, concluding that DOMA does violate the equal protection rights of lesbians and gay men. Edie’s case, Windsor v. U.S. is one of several the Supreme Court could take for review this term. The justices met in a private conference Nov. 30 where the marriage equality cases could have been considered. SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston reported earlier today that the justices “took no action” on any of the same-sex marriage cases that have wended their way through the federal courts. Denniston notes that nothing has “ruled out the possibility that some actions on same-sex marriage could be announced” on Monday. Or it could be, Denniston continues, that the high court will need more than one conference meeting to “decide how to proceed” on handling the marriage equality cases.

by Jeremy Leaming

The Dish headline called it the “single biggest night for gay rights in electoral history.” And it’s hard to mess with that assessment. Voters in Maryland, Maine, Washington and Minnesota voted in favor of marriage equality.

But beyond those ballot measure victories, Andrew Sullivan reports that gay men and lesbians made up five percent of the electorate, the vast majority of them supporting Obama, “the first president to support marriage equality, and who mentioned gays by name for the first time in the history of victory speeches.”

Then of course, there was the election of Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate, the first openly gay person to serve in that chamber.

But Sullivan’s post provides plenty of detail of the efforts to defeat the equality measures, including the funding and work of the National Organization for Marriage, a religious right outfit that strives to scuttle marriage equality by employing tired tactics of demonization. NOM says its mission is “to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.” Sullivan highlights a piece from Adam Serwer reporting that NOM “believed that putting forth black and Latino spokespeople, they could discredit the idea of same-sex marriage as a civil rights cause and drive a wedge between two typically Democratic constituencies…".

In Maryland Serwer concluded NOM’s strategy appeared rather wobbly.

Indeed, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Coalition, said part of the success in Maryland involved creating partnerships with other civil liberties groups, such as the NAACP, clergy and businesses, The Washington Post reported.