Gay-marriage ruling a memo to Justice Kennedy | America Speaks Ink

What?s in a name? In 2008, supporters of a state ballot measure convinced a majority of California voters that there was a meaningful difference between extending full domestic partnership rights to gay couples and calling their relationships marriage.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agrees ? sort of. On Tuesday it held that the measure, Proposition 8, violated the U.S. Constitution not because there is a right to gay marriage, but because it took away the equal right to the institution of marriage that gay Californians briefly held under state law before Proposition 8 was passed.

The upshot is that while gay-rights advocates should rightly be happy with the decision, it isn?t the major legal breakthrough that some hoped it would be. The Supreme Court could uphold the circuit judges? position without making same- sex marriage legal across the U.S.

The California issue is rooted in language. Before and after Proposition 8, gay couples in California had the same rights as heterosexual couples when it came to adoption, benefits, hospital access and all other legal aspects of marriage. Yet opponents and proponents alike are convinced that the word ?marriage? means everything.

Those who reject gay marriage while (at least in principle) accepting practical equality for gay couples have found themselves in a bind when trying to explain their position in court. For most, the basis for this stance surely lies in religious traditionalism. Mores have changed, and discrimination against gay people is no longer socially acceptable in many circles. But marriage is so bound up in religious tradition that a radical change, like the possibility of same-sex unions, challenges people?s settled expectations and their ideals of what marriage is supposed to be.

The establishments of most conservative religious denominations and the bulk of followers ? from Catholics to Baptists to Orthodox Jews to Mormons to Muslims ? are the stalwarts in opposing gay marriage. In these traditions, change comes incrementally and over generations. Almost 500 years after the Reformation, Catholicism still rejects divorce. Orthodox Judaism is not going to endorse marriages between Jews and non- Jews, no matter what more-liberal Jewish denominations might do.

Yet such religious traditionalism has proven difficult to translate into a legally cognizable argument. Because of the separation of church and state, Proposition 8?s proponents couldn?t simply tell the truth: That they oppose gay marriage because it is against their faith and their customs. They did claim in court that their religious liberty was affected, but this argument is a sure loser, since they may continue to determine their own marriage rules. The state?s adoption of gay marriage will have no more coercive effect than the state?s recognition of divorce does on the Catholic church.

There is a certain paradox here. The state recognizes marriages performed by priests, rabbis and imams ? a privilege that itself deviates from strict separation between religion and government. This makes civil, state-sanctioned marriage seem religious, which is exactly why religious traditionalists are threatened by the idea of state marriage extending to gay people.

Imagine that the state didn?t use the word marriage to describe any relationship, but only recognized civil union for all couples, gay or straight. In this parallel universe, there would be no discrimination. And presumably, neither religious traditionalists nor gay-rights advocates would have reason to complain. But that imaginary world isn?t ours. Once the state calls something marriage, supporters of gay equality have every reason to insist that this honorable word must extend to everyone equally.

"); TH_articles[TH_position] = { article: "23227", publisher: "28-1371-5720", category: "ASI", url: document.location, load: function() { headID = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]; newScript = document.createElement('script'); newScript.type = 'text/javascript'; newScript.src = 'http://server.talkahead.com/scripts/thwidget/th.js'; headID.appendChild(newScript); } }; if (TH_position==0){ setTimeout(function() {TH_articles[TH_position].load(); }, 1); }

Source: http://americaspeaksink.com/2012/02/gay-marriage-ruling-a-memo-to-justice-kennedy/

fullerton police beating ron artest name change pat boone psn down rem typhoon dwts elimination