Watching other pro-gay rights folks debating whatever civil unions are an acceptable alternative to marriage rights, I feel like an underling watching Napoleon promise parts of Waterloo to his lieutenants. Maybe I missed a memo. Did we win something? Has a legislature come down on our side lately? One certainly hasn't in Victory Central, aka Massachusetts, where the Supreme Judicial Court ruled the state must grant gay marriages by May 17 but the legislature just completed the first of three phases necessary to amend their Constitution and ban gay marriage. Has the federal government come to our aid? Not unless pushing a federal amendment to delegitimize both gay marriages and civil unions counts, which it doesn't.
Where's the push for federal recognition of Vermont's civil unions and California's gay marriages? The first would require legislation (paging Rep. Tammy Baldwin, Tammy Baldwin to the gay courtesy phone), the second would require a court challenge (paging Rosie O'Donnell, Rosie O'Donnell to the joint tax return courtesy phone). Is anyone planning to do anything about this?
Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra ::: 2004:03:30:15:38
I recall hearing on NPR yesterday morning that the Massachusets amendment probably wasn't likely to pass and be adopted until sometime next year, presumably months after legal marriages would have taken place in the state. My guess would be that the passing of the amendment and attendant removal of a previously legal state of marriage would then trigger the lawsuits over the same, so maybe that's what everyone's waiting for: the first domino to fall, basically.