The United States Supreme Court is going to take on the issue of marriage equality (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/07/supreme-court-gay-marriage_n_2218441.html) and will hear cases about California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA].
Quote
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.
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.
But it wouldn't be til next year.
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.
Quote from: tekla on December 08, 2012, 12:26:36 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: agfrommd on December 08, 2012, 11:49:57 AM
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].