Obama Weighs Stepping In On Gay Marriage Case
Facing heightened expectations from gay rights supporters, the Obama administration is considering urging the Supreme Court to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage - a move that could have a far-reaching impact on same-sex couples across the country.
The administration has one week to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the justices outlining its opinion on the California ban, known as Proposition 8. While an administration brief alone is unlikely to sway the high court, the government’s opinion does carry weight with the justices.
Opponents of the Proposition 8 ban believe the president signaled his intention to file a brief when he declared in last month’s inaugural address that gays and lesbians must be “treated like anyone else under the law.” An administration official said Obama - a former constitutional law professor - was not foreshadowing any legal action in his remarks and was simply restating his personal belief in the right of gays and lesbians to marry, though the official said the administration was considering filing a brief.
The Proposition 8 ballot initiative was approved by California voters in 2008 in response to a state Supreme Court decision that had allowed gay marriage. Twenty-nine other states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, while nine states and Washington, D.C., recognize same-sex marriage.
Photo Credit: (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
If he were to step in on this, would it help or harm the case in front of the Supreme Court?
Today, same-sex marriage is legal in Maryland. (By the way, congrats!) Alas, not everyone’s a fan. The guy above, for example, who stopped a popular wedding trolley business that earned him $50,000 per year because he didn’t want to have to serve gay couples due to his Christian beliefs.
Same-sex marriage now legal in Maine: ”Donna Galluzzo, left, and Lisa Gorney leave the City Clerk’s office after obtaining their marriage license, early Saturday at City Hall in Portland, Maine. Same-sex couples in Maine are now legally permitted to marry under a new law that went into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.” (photo by Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press)
Decades before gay marriage started to see major popular breakthroughs, there was Richard Adams (left) and his partner, Anthony Sullivan. The duo made history in 1975, when they applied for—and received—a marriage license from a liberal-leaning county clerk in Boulder, Colo. (They were one of six couples on hand that day.) The licenses were invalidated by the state of Colorado, and Adams and Sullivan found themselves in a series of legal battles, as Sullivan, an Australian national, was denied a permanent resident petition. The letter they received from Immigration and Naturalization Service read as such: “You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two f———.” A series of appeals later failed for the couple, but after a stay in Europe, they returned to the U.S. and laid low for more than two decades. Adams, who died Monday at 65, lived to see same-sex marriage increasingly accepted legally and culturally. He is survived by Sullivan, his mother, and a number of siblings. (Los Angeles Times file photo)
People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.Pope Benedict XVI • Denouncing same-sex marriage in his annual Christmas speech today. Benedict has long been viewed, dating back to his ascension to the papacy, as a staunch traditionalist on the Catholic Church’s longtime social positions, and his views on homosexuality have proven no exception: “When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God.” source
You vacillate, ambivalent about the role you wish to perform – the disciple of David or Nero. With such a contradiction between your statements and actions, on what basis can you expect anyone – Christians in particular – to trust or respect you?Joseph Devine, the Bishop of Motherwell • Ripping British Prime Minister David Cameron for his supportive stance on gay marriage, and calling Cameron “out of his depth” for his stance on the issue — as well as his lack of support on moves by Christians approaching the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to demand their right to wear the cross. “So far as the Roman Catholic Church … is concerned, you are out of your depth. We will take no finger-prodding lectures from anyone or any group devoid of moral competence,” Devine said. That last statement is odd: Devine is significantly more out of his depth than Cameron is.
BREAKING: US Supreme Court will hear gay marriage cases
The US Supreme Court has agreed to take up two gay marriage cases in their first serious look at the issue.
The court today granted review of the Defense of Marriage act, a federal law which says marriage can exist only between a man and a woman, and Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in California, NBC News reports.
More updates on BreakingNews.com.
Photo: Gay marriage advocates cheer during a rally outside a federal courthouse in San Francisco moments before hearing that judges had struck down Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, on Feb. 7, 2012. (Beck Diefenbach / Reuters file)
“Now that the Supreme Court is wading into the battle, the justices could decide the more basic issue of whether any state can ban same-sex marriage under the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law.” This could be big, guys.
It’s that he can’t accept how society would view me and the status that it would incur. Marriage is still a form of social status. I do understand him. I understand why he’s doing this.Hong Kong resident Gigi Chao • Discussing her reaction to her father, real estate magnate Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, setting a $65 million bounty for any man who can woo her and ask for her hand in marriage. One problem — she’s already married. To a woman. Her father hasn’t accepted the marriage, however, hence the bounty. “At first I was entertained by it, and then that entertainment turned into the realization and conviction that I am a really lucky girl to have such a loving daddy, because it’s really sweet of him to do something like this as an expression of his fatherly love,” she explained. “But I don’t appreciate getting 1,500 e-mails.”
Pro-gay marriage ads using straight people to push message: This may sound like a contradiction, but apparently it’s not. “The moderate tough guys we need to flip to win a couple of these races are still the ones who say that gays are gross,” explains fundraising consultant Andy Szekeres (who, by the way, is gay). “Pushing people to an uncomfortable place, it’s something you can’t do in a TV ad.”
But seriously … I am not kidding.
I’m not watching all of...
Yahoo wants to buy Hulu now too. They’re going on an “I...
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Chick-fil-A says it will stop funding anti-gay groups
(Photo: Cody Duty / AP)
Chick-fil-A has agreed to stop funding groups with anti-same-sex marriage stances, according to a statement released Wednesday by LGBT advocacy group The Civil Rights Agenda.
Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, who had blocked the fast-food chain from opening stores in Chicago because of its anti-gay views, likewise announced he would now let Chick-fil-A open up new outlets after he received a letter this morning from the company stating that they would cease donating to the groups.
Yet to be seen: Will this actually end the boycott? Or will pro-LGBT chicken fans continue to deny the chain their business?
Democratic Maryland delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. wrote a letter (at left via Yahoo!) condemning Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo’s public support of same-sex marriage.
Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe responded to Burns’s letter with one of his own. It begins: “I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland’s state government…”
Read this amazing response at the link. Kluwe has a way with words. Sample: “I can’t even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now; the mental gymnastics your brain has to tortuously contort itself through to make such a preposterous statement are surely worthy of an Olympic gold medal (the Russian judge gives you a 10 for ‘beautiful oppressionism’).”
Governor Romney says he’s against same-sex marriage because every child deserves a mother and a father. I think every child deserves a family as loving and committed as mine. Because the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. It comes from the love that binds us; that’s what makes a family. Mr. Romney, my family is just as real as yours.Zach Wahls, speaking at the Democratic National Convention. Wahls, a young man from Iowa with two mothers, spoke to the Iowa state legislature in early 2011 on behalf of marriage equality and the video of his speech went viral. (via pantslessprogressive)
I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.
When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
Jill Abramson, the editor of the paper, disagrees with this assessment. ”In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane’s sweeping conclusions,” she told Politico.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
