Doma ruled unconstitutional

[SGOS]

Why is something that was obviously against "justice and liberty for all" ever against the law in the first place in a free secular society?

Baffling, isn't it?

[SGOS]

So what's the next step?  Will the Federal Government eventually legislate equality for gays?  Could this be challenged in court, or is it better to just leave it up to the states?  Would state discrimination against gays be deemed unconstitutional?  Off the top of my head, these seem like straight forward questions, but sometimes these issues open new cans of worms that are hard to anticipate.

[Johan]

This is definitely going to be a big deal in states that recognize gay marriage/civil unions.

Is important to note that under federal law, marriage ( gay or otherwise) is not the same thing as civil unions. So in states which allow gay marriage, those couples are now equal in the eyes of the law. In states that only allow civil unions, those couples can still suck it as far as being equal goes.

The is still more work to do. With luck, this ruling may motivate some or all current civil union states to grow a pair and allow gay marriage. And with more luck that might motivate some of our more bigoted states to step into the 20th century and treat gay people equally.

[stromboli]

And Prop 8 case dismissed. Almost makes up for the voting rights decision. Well done, SCOTUS. :)

"Dismissed" means tossed back to the lower courts, usually on a technicality. Was prop 8 overturned or simply tossed back to the lower courts?

Prop 8 was overturned at the District level and never got reversed past that. It has to pass through every lower court before SCOTUS sees it. When the SCOTUS refuses to view a case, it means whatever ruling was last applied stands, so Prop 8 is toast.

Vaughn Walker's District decision ran to 200+ pages. To overturn it would have taken refutation of every aspect of his decision, so it was essentially won at that level.

[Titania]

Warning: long-winded post ahead! If you are averse to tl;dr, do not read on!

Here's what happened with Prop 8 today:

The Supreme Court did NOT rule that California was right or wrong to allow or ban gay marriage. They didn't even get to that point. They basically threw the case out and let the State's ruling stand.

What happened was that federal courts, including the Supreme Court, will only hear a case if it's being argued by the State or by a directly aggrieved party to the issue. The plaintiffs were gay couples wanting to get married, so they were directly aggrieved by Prop 8 and thus had legal standing to take it to court. The defense, on the other hand, had no parties that had immediate personal interest in preserving prop 8 (just because you hate homosexuality does not mean it's injuring you - hello!), and the State of California was not willing to defend Prop 8 because its state legislature wasn't even the one who put it through. Here's how that works:

California has a proposition system where any citizen or group can add propositions to the ballot if it gets enough signatures. They need no endorsement from any elected officials. But this means that sometimes propositions will go through which the State does not agree with and is not willing to defend in a higher court. In my opinion, and in the dissenting Justices' opinion (including Kennedy and Sotomayor who are champions of gay rights), this makes the citizens of the State into the State itself, de facto, and they should be allowed to appoint their own counsel if the official State is not willing to argue their case. If they're allowed to act as a pseudo-State for the purpose of proponing ballot measures, then they should be allowed to defend those measures. The majority verdict was that they shouldn't.

So the defense had no one with legal standing willing to defend it, and thus the Supreme Court ruled that the case wouldn't be heard. This effectively makes the State's ruling stand, and California already ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional for California. That means Californians can get same-sex married again. So today's ruling is good news for Californians, but it does nothing to address the larger issue of the constitutionality of marriage bans.

It seems like basically a stalling tactic. The court ended up voting on whether it could even hear the case, and the vote was not split down ideological lines, which should point to odd motives. I believe it likely that Justices Scalia and Roberts, conservatives who voted with the majority, did it so they wouldn't have to address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans, for fear of losing. (Gay rights are favored 5-4 in the Supreme Court currently, by the liberals + Kennedy.) My BF believes liberals Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan were stalling too, but for fear of losing, and because they knew if they waited a couple more years to address the issue they would have a lot more liberal support for gay rights. It's a fast-growing movement.

Liberal Sotomayor and mostly-libertarian Kennedy voted in the minority - that the defense *should* be allowed to make its case - in my opinion because they wanted the case to be heard and the constitutionality of the matter addressed right away. I'm sure they were sure they'd win. I'm also sure conservatives Alito and Thomas, who also dissented, were sure THEY'd win.

None of this came down to wrong vs. right. Gay rights won on a technicality, and it's a half-assed victory.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

[spoil:p2ny6b68]Warning: long-winded post ahead! If you are averse to tl;dr, do not read on!

Here's what happened with Prop 8 today:

The Supreme Court did NOT rule that California was right or wrong to allow or ban gay marriage. They didn't even get to that point. They basically threw the case out and let the State's ruling stand.

What happened was that federal courts, including the Supreme Court, will only hear a case if it's being argued by the State or by a directly aggrieved party to the issue. The plaintiffs were gay couples wanting to get married, so they were directly aggrieved by Prop 8 and thus had legal standing to take it to court. The defense, on the other hand, had no parties that had immediate personal interest in preserving prop 8 (just because you hate homosexuality does not mean it's injuring you - hello!), and the State of California was not willing to defend Prop 8 because its state legislature wasn't even the one who put it through. Here's how that works:

California has a proposition system where any citizen or group can add propositions to the ballot if it gets enough signatures. They need no endorsement from any elected officials. But this means that sometimes propositions will go through which the State does not agree with and is not willing to defend in a higher court. In my opinion, and in the dissenting Justices' opinion (including Kennedy and Sotomayor who are champions of gay rights), this makes the citizens of the State into the State itself, de facto, and they should be allowed to appoint their own counsel if the official State is not willing to argue their case. If they're allowed to act as a pseudo-State for the purpose of proponing ballot measures, then they should be allowed to defend those measures. The majority verdict was that they shouldn't.

So the defense had no one with legal standing willing to defend it, and thus the Supreme Court ruled that the case wouldn't be heard. This effectively makes the State's ruling stand, and California already ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional for California. That means Californians can get same-sex married again. So today's ruling is good news for Californians, but it does nothing to address the larger issue of the constitutionality of marriage bans.

It seems like basically a stalling tactic. The court ended up voting on whether it could even hear the case, and the vote was not split down ideological lines, which should point to odd motives. I believe it likely that Justices Scalia and Roberts, conservatives who voted with the majority, did it so they wouldn't have to address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans, for fear of losing. (Gay rights are favored 5-4 in the Supreme Court currently, by the liberals + Kennedy.) My BF believes liberals Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan were stalling too, but for fear of losing, and because they knew if they waited a couple more years to address the issue they would have a lot more liberal support for gay rights. It's a fast-growing movement.

Liberal Sotomayor and mostly-libertarian Kennedy voted in the minority - that the defense *should* be allowed to make its case - in my opinion because they wanted the case to be heard and the constitutionality of the matter addressed right away. I'm sure they were sure they'd win. I'm also sure conservatives Alito and Thomas, who also dissented, were sure THEY'd win.

None of this came down to wrong vs. right. Gay rights won on a technicality, and it's a half-assed victory.[/spoil:p2ny6b68]

Awesome post.

I don't think anyone can claim that the fight for gay rights is over, we still have a lot of work to do. I still can't get married in my state, I could still get legally fired because I am gay, and I can still get evicted because I am gay. There is a lot more to be done before full equality.

[stromboli]

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/l ... 963f4.html

"Regardless of the court decision, the Church remains irrevocably committed to strengthening traditional marriage between a man and a woman, which for thousands of years has proven to be the best environment for nurturing children," reads a statement by the LDS Church. "Notably, the court decision does not change the definition of marriage in nearly three fourths of the states."

In two separate rulings Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court issued 5-4 rulings striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act and upholding a California court's decision that overturned the state's ban on gay marriage.

The court's ruling on the DOMA law struck part of a federal anti-gay marriage law that has kept legally married same-sex couples from receiving tax, health and pension benefits. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of gay marriage in its decision on California's Proposition 8, but left in place a trial court's declaration that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

The Daily Herald is the primary newspaper in Provo and Utah County, where Mormonism is strongest. I'm sure the lawyer heavy LDS church knew the outcome on Prop 8. Expect more tearful responses to follow.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

^ The Mormons were visited the day before Prop Hate got its ass kicked. I really wish they would come again, but I'm sure I ran them off (in a polite way, I just told them I have no interest).

[Smartmarzipan]

So what's the next step?  Will the Federal Government eventually legislate equality for gays?  Could this be challenged in court, or is it better to just leave it up to the states?  Would state discrimination against gays be deemed unconstitutional?  Off the top of my head, these seem like straight forward questions, but sometimes these issues open new cans of worms that are hard to anticipate.

I believe the next step is ENDA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment ... nation_Act

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is legislation proposed in the United States Congress that would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by civilian, nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees.

ENDA has been introduced in every Congress since 1994 except the 109th. Similar legislation has been introduced without passage since 1974.[1] The bill gained its best chance at passing after the Democratic Party broke twelve years of Republican Congressional rule in the 2006 midterm elections. In 2007, gender identity protections were added to the legislation for the first time. Some sponsors believed that even with a Democratic majority, ENDA did not have enough votes to pass the House of Representatives with transgender inclusion and dropped it from the bill, which passed the House and then died in the Senate. President George W. Bush threatened to veto the measure. LGBT advocacy organizations and the LGBT community were divided over support of the modified bill.

[Titania]

Why is something that was obviously against "justice and liberty for all" ever (in) the law in the first place in a free secular society?

For the same reason that we said "all men are created equal" but simultaneously had slavery. Because we human animals are fucking stupid. Because we have only the context of our own culture to go by when we're legislating ethics, plus the extent that our meager brains can carry us. We didn't know jack shizzle back then; we did the best we knew, and every year "the best we know" gets better and better.

Legislators are only human and products of their culture. Our Founding Fathers had good intentions but they were not perfect humans from a perfect culture, and that's why we have amendments to the Constitution. To create a "more perfect union", as they themselves said we should.

[SGOS]

I have a neighbor who is adamantly against gay rights, although he insists that gays are not being discriminated against.  He doesn't see himself as discriminatory in any way.  Disallowing equal privileges to gays is just part of the "natural order" of things.  It's as it should be and always has been.  I've debated this with him.  Granted he's very much what I would call intellectually slow, and he is misinformed about much of the issue, but I think that this sort of thinking based on traditional values is ingrained in us, its part of the conservative value system.

The logical paradox of "all men being created equal", except for blacks, women, homosexuals and the Irish, was just not apparent to the founding fathers.  The prejudices and bigotry are simply passed on from generation to generation and are accepted as normal.  People don't think about these things much or question them when they are accepted as normal.

My neighbor is no doubt in a stew over the Courts ruling.  I'm not sure how he's reckoning with it.  But he gets free meds from the VA, so at least he's not apt to go postal and start shooting the place up.

[Jack89]

I can't help thinking, as a single guy, am I going to have to pick up the slack for all these new tax breaks?  I never could see the justification for married couples, gay or straight, being "more equal" than a single person when it comes to taxes.  I suppose it was originally a social engineering tool to promote baby-making or something.  

In any event, I'm not buckling to the social pressure and refuse to get married again, to a gal or a guy.

[Plu]

I don't know what the US tax breaks are like, but the promotion of baby-making seems like a fairly good idea, or the country is going to get very empty very soon :)

People with families tend to have much higher expenses. In a way, marriage breaks help support children by letting the whole country share in paying for a new generation. It'd get problematic if you have chose between making enough money to pay for kids or actually having them. This might let more families do both.

(And obviously that gets abused, like everything, because people. But hey, it's an interesting concept anyway.)

[_Xenu_]

Yahoo has a nice article explaining the legal ramifications of the ruling.

http://news.yahoo.com/complicated-lots- ... 40369.html

[SGOS]

I can't help thinking, as a single guy, am I going to have to pick up the slack for all these new tax breaks? I suppose it was originally a social engineering tool to promote baby-making or something.  

I've assumed that too, but this stuff is concocted by politicians who are throwing bones to the crowd to gain favor.  They are not population experts, and their interest in demographics is limited to how to redistrict the political map in their favor.

Fair or not, married people do get certain tax advantages, although the yearly tax payments are higher for a married couple filing jointly than a single person.  The deductions start when you have kids.  Most of the tax advantages for married couples are in the form of exemptions on inheritance, and social security payments that extend to spouses.

Whether such exemptions are fair is a political issue 1st, and a moral one 2nd.  In times past, when one partner was completely dependent on the other, I think there were moral cases to be made that would protect a surviving spouse from losing a home when the breadwinner was gone, especially when kids were involved.

But you're right that someone has to "pick up the taxes" or the government goes broke and can no longer afford to bail out the banks, and do special favors for the corporate sponsors.