Supreme Court to Take on Marriage Equality

[Shang]

The United States Supreme Court is going to take on the issue of marriage equality and will hear cases about California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA].

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will take up California's ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals.

The justices said Friday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state's gay marriage ban, though on narrow grounds. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state could not take away the same-sex marriage right that had been granted by California's Supreme Court.

[suzifrommd]

Wonderful. Seven straight males and two straight females are going to decide who the rest of us are allowed to marry.

This could easily go horribly wrong and land us with a permanent decision that we have no right to marry who we choose.

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

But it wouldn't be til next year.

[tekla]

I doubt that they would come out with a huge decision against.  They don't want to be on the wrong side of history.  They will either uphold the right to marry, or find in a technicality (possible in both cases, and perhaps the best outcome) that the people didn't have standing to sue in the first place.

[suzifrommd]

I doubt that they would come out with a huge decision against.  They don't want to be on the wrong side of history. 

Tekla, I hope you're right.

[tekla]

Well they took the cases that have the built in punt option if they basically want to pass - so they could find that there was no standing.

But Xians aside, the arguments for allowing this are in fact, very conservative arguments.

[Shang]

Wonderful. Seven straight males and two straight females are going to decide who the rest of us are allowed to marry.

This could easily go horribly wrong and land us with a permanent decision that we have no right to marry who we choose.

To me it's a scary prospect.  If they find the laws unconstitutional, that's great, but if they find them constitutional and valid...Then this place just went south in a hurry because the decision can't be overturned unless Congress makes a law that overturns that decision, and that would never happen (or at least it won't happen any time soon).

I hope that they'll listen to sound, logical arguments and not the religious bullsh*t arguments that are bound to come up.  [Seriously, keep your religion out of my right to marry someone and have it legally recognized.] 

If they say Prop 8 and DOMA are unconstitutional, that's going to be great and I'll have hope for this country.  If not, I will probably step up my activism a notch and hope for a change...though moving to Canada might be an option. [Joking, I want to see the U.S. federally recognize same-sex marriage].