Mass. Supremes approve Gay Marriage

More info on Mass. Supreme's decision
Nov 18, 2003
Massachusetts High Court Rules Ban on Gay Marriage Unconstitutional, Orders Legislature to Fix
By Jennifer Peter - Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution, but stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law. The Supreme Judicial Court's 4-3 ruling ordered the Legislature to come up with a solution within 180 days.

The ruling closely matches the 1999 Vermont Supreme Court decision, which led to its Legislature's approval in 2000 of civil unions that give couples many of the same benefits of marriage.

"Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. It brings stability to our society," Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote in the long-awaited ruling. "For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial and social benefits. In return, it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations."

While a victory for gay rights advocates, the decision fell short of what the seven couples who sued the state had hoped to receive: the right to marry their longtime companion.

The Massachusetts question will now return to the Legislature, which already is considering a constitutional amendment that would legally define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The state's powerful Speaker of the House, Tom Finneran of Boston, has endorsed this proposal.

A similar initiative, launched by citizens, was defeated by the Legislature last year on a procedural vote.

Gay and lesbian advocates had been cheered by a series of advances this year, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws, the ordination of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, and a Canadian appeals court ruling that it was unconstitutional to deny gay couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples. Belgium and the Netherlands also have legalized gay marriage.

In addition to Vermont, courts in Hawaii and Alaska have previously ruled that the states did not have a right to deny marriage to gay couples. In those two states, the decisions were followed by the adoption of constitutional amendments limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. No American court has ordered the issuance of a marriage license - a privilege reserved for heterosexual couples.

The U.S. House is currently considering a constitutional ban on gay marriage. President Bush, although he believes marriage should be defined as a union between one man and one woman, recently said that a constitutional amendment is not yet necessary.

Gov. Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that marriage should be preserved as a union between a man and a woman, but has declined to comment on what he would do if gay marriages are legalized. On the campaign trail last fall, Romney said he would veto gay-marriage legislation. He supports giving domestic benefits such as inheritance and hospital visitation rights to gay couples.

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAQ7LO36ND.html

wow the Puritains finally get out of the dark ages...Im very surprised and glad it finally went through.

Quinn
Quinn, let's hope the Mass. legislature will act in a positive manner and at least grant civil union status if not actual marriage.

BBB

Well, we are socially liberal, mostly. And we have a pretty big gay population. I'm thrilled, but not surprised!

The ruling says that gay civil unions are to be treated, legally, as hetero civil unions. There are something like 1,000 little tidbit laws that apply. Some big deals and some not.

It starts here! Yes!

Actually, to be clear, the ruling says that the current ban against gay marriage is no good.

It punts back to the lege the issue of what to call it (and what rights it contains) if they don't call it marriage.

This is the same path that Vermont went down when it invented the term 'civil unions'.

That legislation was signed by a certain Gov. Howard Dean, FYI.

== The Love That Killed America ==
== The Love That Killed America ==
As gay marriage wins even more legal support, Bible-clutching homophobes recoil, violently
(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/11/19/notes111903.DTL&nl=fix

The gays are marching in. The end is near. Sheer unadulterated evil and scary anal sex and superlative hair products and new blasts of fresh happy love are to be unleashed anew upon the country. Horror is nigh. Everyone into the bunker.

This is, apparently, the prevailing sentiment. This is, according to a new poll, the majority response in America to the increasingly successful gay-marriage movement, even as states and the law move more and more aggressively toward proving that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional and immoral and just plain stupid.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/11/18/national1013EST0524.DTL&nl=fix

People are terrified. Religious people, in particular. Hyperzealous, evangelical, white, borderline fanatical religious people who apparently don't see a lot of sunlight and never read books and believe everything their homophobic intolerant Bible-spouting evangelical pastor and maybe Ann Coulter say, even more particularly.

The nation is not ready for gay marriage. This is the sad news. Even as homosexual people in love celebrate the latest huge victory in Massachusetts' state Supreme Court in support of gay-marriage rights, an enormous and quivering chunk of the BushCo-voting nation cowers in inexplicable horror.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/11/18/national1008EST0522.DTL&nl=fix

And almost every one of them is vowing, right this minute, to vote for Bush in the next election, if for no other reason than because he's a none-too-bright born-again Christian who will protect them from those icky homos and will invoke God's name as it's supposed to be invoked -- you know, as justification for launching ultraviolent bloody hate-filled unwinnable wars over petroleum and corporate power.

The nation is not ready. Even gay rights advocates are worried, as the issue is simply moving and evolving too quickly for the dread-filled, God-fearing, war-drunk nation to absorb.

And, verily, the fear among the gay community is that the issue's amazing momentum could backfire, could divide the nation even more violently and drive more confused citizens straight into the fearmongering tentacles of the hate-filled Right.

It does not matter that gay marriage is so obviously no threat whatsoever to "traditional" marriage or the sanctity of uptight pseudo-Christian missionary-position Budweiser-fueled sex and the spawning of more Republican babies.

It does not matter that gay marriage could, in fact, be the savior of the institution of marriage in this nation in how it gives new life, new breath to our beleaguered notions of love and commitment and family, considering the relentless 50 percent divorce rate among happy heterosexuals.

This is a nation that still, despite its incredibly diverse range of religious belief, despite its array of progressive cities and universities, despite how every nuanced soul anywhere on the planet understands that love is not to be contained by rigid legislation and sanctimonious bile and pious narrow mindedness (hey, just ask the Taliban), this is a nation that still wraps itself in the blind and dangerous cloak of a few misinterpreted, regurgitated lines of the Bible as justification for bashing gays and remaining completely ignorant as to uncontainable energies of love and commitment. It's true.

Of course, at this point it seems completely useless to point out to the America's misguided homophobes that if you really want to follow the Bible that closely, why, we can easily justify, say, incarcerating unmarried single mothers. Or exterminating homeless people. Or burning pagans. Or imprisoning Buddhists or Rosicrucians and members of that weird cult Tom Cruise and John Travolta are into.

After all, the Bible has been used to justify slavery. And misogyny. And oppression. And racism. And genocide. And Pat Robertson. For centuries. Andit still is.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385476957

Half the nation still actually believes gays can change their sexual orientation if they really want to. Most still feel homosexuality is a serious sin. And, perhaps most depressingly, the poll found that the higher the level of one's religious commitment, the more bitterly, violently opposed one is to gay marriage and new definitions of love.

Ironic, isn't it? It's a global truism: The more passionately religious you are, the more hateful and small minded you become, and the more desperate you are to convince everyone else that Satan himself is at the door, carrying nothing but a whip and a sinister grin and a big bottle of Astroglide.

But here is the good news: In the long term, this bilious right-wing national recoil does not matter. The writing is on the wall. The cracks are appearing all over the homophobic armor. The national whining, the fear, the hate, the resistance, are only a necessary and entirely predictable pothole, a typical reflex, a painful wart on the big toe of progress.

After all, huge and violent were the protests from angry, terrified citizens when blacks were first allowed into white schools. Enraged and horrified were many powerful white men when women were finally given the right to vote. Shocked and outraged were the orangutans when humans first began to walk upright.

There is no significant change, no progress, without much impassioned puling from those who refuse to open their hearts, and minds, and thighs.

And the good news is, the sadly misguided citizens of America who are right now raging against homosexual love, well, they are indeed in for a number of big surprises in the coming decades, as their world of intolerance and fear crumbles. To be sure, in the near term the controversy and the backfirings and the right-wing spew will be painful and obnoxious and sad. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere.

And, verily, to believe that the energy of love and devotion can occur only between a man and a woman, that the only acceptable definition of this most universal and timeless and unfathomably powerful of emotions can only exist between a penis and a vagina, well, perhaps this is the ultimate insult, the nastiest sin against true divinity.As gay marriage wins even more legal support, Bible-clutching homophobes recoil, violently

(By Mark Morford)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/11/19/notes111903.DTL&nl=fix

The gays are marching in. The end is near. Sheer unadulterated evil and scary anal sex and superlative hair products and new blasts of fresh happy love are to be unleashed anew upon the country. Horror is nigh. Everyone into the bunker.

This is, apparently, the prevailing sentiment. This is, according to a new poll, the majority response in America to the increasingly successful gay-marriage movement, even as states and the law move more and more aggressively toward proving that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional and immoral and just plain stupid.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/11/18/national1013EST0524.DTL&nl=fix

People are terrified. Religious people, in particular. Hyperzealous, evangelical, white, borderline fanatical religious people who apparently don't see a lot of sunlight and never read books and believe everything their homophobic intolerant Bible-spouting evangelical pastor and maybe Ann Coulter say, even more particularly.

The nation is not ready for gay marriage. This is the sad news. Even as homosexual people in love celebrate the latest huge victory in Massachusetts' state Supreme Court in support of gay-marriage rights, an enormous and quivering chunk of the BushCo-voting nation cowers in inexplicable horror.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/11/18/national1008EST0522.DTL&nl=fix

And almost every one of them is vowing, right this minute, to vote for Bush in the next election, if for no other reason than because he's a none-too-bright born-again Christian who will protect them from those icky homos and will invoke God's name as it's supposed to be invoked -- you know, as justification for launching ultraviolent bloody hate-filled unwinnable wars over petroleum and corporate power.

The nation is not ready. Even gay rights advocates are worried, as the issue is simply moving and evolving too quickly for the dread-filled, God-fearing, war-drunk nation to absorb.

And, verily, the fear among the gay community is that the issue's amazing momentum could backfire, could divide the nation even more violently and drive more confused citizens straight into the fearmongering tentacles of the hate-filled Right.

It does not matter that gay marriage is so obviously no threat whatsoever to "traditional" marriage or the sanctity of uptight pseudo-Christian missionary-position Budweiser-fueled sex and the spawning of more Republican babies.

It does not matter that gay marriage could, in fact, be the savior of the institution of marriage in this nation in how it gives new life, new breath to our beleaguered notions of love and commitment and family, considering the relentless 50 percent divorce rate among happy heterosexuals.

This is a nation that still, despite its incredibly diverse range of religious belief, despite its array of progressive cities and universities, despite how every nuanced soul anywhere on the planet understands that love is not to be contained by rigid legislation and sanctimonious bile and pious narrow mindedness (hey, just ask the Taliban), this is a nation that still wraps itself in the blind and dangerous cloak of a few misinterpreted, regurgitated lines of the Bible as justification for bashing gays and remaining completely ignorant as to uncontainable energies of love and commitment. It's true.

Of course, at this point it seems completely useless to point out to the America's misguided homophobes that if you really want to follow the Bible that closely, why, we can easily justify, say, incarcerating unmarried single mothers. Or exterminating homeless people. Or burning pagans. Or imprisoning Buddhists or Rosicrucians and members of that weird cult Tom Cruise and John Travolta are into.

After all, the Bible has been used to justify slavery. And misogyny. And oppression. And racism. And genocide. And Pat Robertson. For centuries. Andit still is.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385476957

Half the nation still actually believes gays can change their sexual orientation if they really want to. Most still feel homosexuality is a serious sin. And, perhaps most depressingly, the poll found that the higher the level of one's religious commitment, the more bitterly, violently opposed one is to gay marriage and new definitions of love.

Ironic, isn't it? It's a global truism: The more passionately religious you are, the more hateful and small minded you become, and the more desperate you are to convince everyone else that Satan himself is at the door, carrying nothing but a whip and a sinister grin and a big bottle of Astroglide.

But here is the good news: In the long term, this bilious right-wing national recoil does not matter. The writing is on the wall. The cracks are appearing all over the homophobic armor. The national whining, the fear, the hate, the resistance, are only a necessary and entirely predictable pothole, a typical reflex, a painful wart on the big toe of progress.

After all, huge and violent were the protests from angry, terrified citizens when blacks were first allowed into white schools. Enraged and horrified were many powerful white men when women were finally given the right to vote. Shocked and outraged were the orangutans when humans first began to walk upright.

There is no significant change, no progress, without much impassioned puling from those who refuse to open their hearts, and minds, and thighs.

And the good news is, the sadly misguided citizens of America who are right now raging against homosexual love, well, they are indeed in for a number of big surprises in the coming decades, as their world of intolerance and fear crumbles. To be sure, in the near term the controversy and the backfirings and the right-wing spew will be painful and obnoxious and sad. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere.

And, verily, to believe that the energy of love and devotion can occur only between a man and a woman, that the only acceptable definition of this most universal and timeless and unfathomably powerful of emotions can only exist between a penis and a vagina, well, perhaps this is the ultimate insult, the nastiest sin against true divinity.