The vote was 5-4. From Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion:
The States have contributed to the fundamental character of the marriage right by placing that institution at the center of so many facets of the legal and social order.
There is no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle. Yet by virtue of their exclusion from that institution, same-sex couples are denied the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage. This harm results in more than just material burdens. Same-sex couples are consigned to an instability many opposite-sex couples would deem intolerable in their own lives. As the State itself makes marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion from that status has the effect of teaching that gays and lesbians are unequal in important respects. It demeans gays and lesbians for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation’s society. Same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning. …
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
The Goodridge decision establishing marriage equality in Massachusetts was decided in 2003. It’s been astonishing how much this issue has changed in twelve years. From a post I wrote in 2004:
The Supreme Court has turned down a chance to overturn the Massachusetts SSM decision – yay! As far as I’m concerned, the longer we keep this issue from being decided in Federal courts, the better. If SSM is decided in the Supreme Court anytime in the next several years, the best we can hope for is to lose. If we actually won in the Supreme Court, there’d be a nationwide Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage so fast we wouldn’t even have time to inquire about job prospects in Canada.
Edited-To-Add bits:
* Scalia’s dissent, as you’d expect, is full of sarcasm and bitterness. Thomas’ dissent is awful, too. The “lead dissent,” by Roberts, is less snarky, but babbles on and on about how for the Court to recognize claims of bigotry from lgb people is the same thing as calling ordinary ‘Mericans bigots.
* From Towleroad: Constitution Guarantees the Freedom to Marry, SCOTUS Says: 7 Quick Takeaways from the Ruling:
1. The decision looks a lot like Windsor in that it is based not on heightened scrutiny per se, but on the Constitution’s airtight respect for the dignity of all persons, gays included.
2. The holding is based on the Fourteenth Amendment, the clause that guarantees that the states treat all citizens equally and with due process of law, but it does not choose due process over equal protection. It chooses both, and links them together, as Justice Kennedy’s Windsor‘s decision tried to do, as well.
3. It’s not the sex discrimination inherent in gay marriage bans that sealed their fate. Rather, it was the Constitution’s guarantee of equal dignity to all persons.
* Jay Kaplan of the ACLU on the work still to be done. Kaplan is talking about Michigan, but could be talking about the entire country in much of the article:
And then there’s RFRA — short for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — and all of its assorted iterations. RFRA-style bills are quickly gaining popularity around the country as the go-to tactic for anti-gay forces seeking to continue to discriminate even after the SCOTUS ruling.
Here in Michigan, for instance, the discriminatory adoption bill that Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law earlier this month is part of a series of proposed legislation targeting the LGBT community, as a backlash response to anticipated marriage equality.[…]
Aside from the legislation we are trying to defeat, there remains a long list of proactive things to do — most important, amending our state civil rights laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories against discrimination. In most places in Michigan it is still legal to be fired and denied housing and public accommodations for being LGBT. While LGBT people may be able to get married over the weekend should the Supreme Court issue a favorable decision, they still could be fired when they return to work Monday morning.
* Here Is The Single Most Important Word In Today’s Historic Marriage Equality Opinion | ThinkProgress It’s “immutable.” “Though the Court’s cases have, at times, been murky on this point, they often refer to immutably as one of several factors that, when combined, can trigger heightened scrutiny.”
This is so good. Hooray for love!
Hurrah!
Remember the conversations we were having about this 11 years ago? I sure do. I’m impressed and surprised at how fast opinions and politics have changed on this issue. It was clear by 2007 where this was heading and there were a few hints that it was really gathering some momentum, but I’m flabbergasted and thankful that we’re where we are at least a decade before I expected it.
I, for one, welcome our new gay and lesbian overlords.
Hey! Don’t forget your bisexual overlords, pal. (We’re the mean ones. You don’t want to forget us.)
But the bisexual overlords were already able to marry, statistically speaking, half the time they desired. They’re doubly overlordly now, but hardly new.
I was telling my date last night how I supported Howard Dean in 2004, and how he was seen as a crazy wild-eyed radical for supporting civil unions.
Maybe this will be a lesson for the bigots out there – you fuck with us when we’re being nice, we will legalize all kinds of shit.
—Myca
Yay!
I enjoy a bit of triumphalist crowing as much as the next person. Ok, maybe not as much as my wife. And some of her friends. And Sargent Wilson. And … ok, plenty of people enjoy a bit of triumphalist crowing more than I do.
I hang out at the First Things blog. There you can find many thoughtful, learned, religiously-inclined folks (as well as a smattering of other folks, but the discussions are moderated so the worst is weeded out). And many feel besieged. The rapid changes that have given us delight have left them bewildered, bereft, and increasingly paranoid.
In particular, I encounter people who believe they have acted with magnanimity and good will in offering accommodations, only to see those accommodations overrun by events. They feel as if they had struck some kind of bargain, and that the other side did not honor it. I was raised to understand that homosexuality is sinful. Yet I supported de-criminalizing sodomy. Now look at what’s happened — I give an inch, they take a mile! Clearly, the moral is that we should never compromise or seek to accommodate people in the slightest respect. We’re engaged in a take-no-prisoner culture war. It’s us or it’s them, and we should fight as if we’re fighting to the death!
I counsel people that the situation is, in fact, worse than a war. In a war, we might in fact negotiate some accommodation. Rather, we’re in a movement. There really is no authority with whom anyone can negotiate. Instead, we should understand each person’s actions as a sincere expression of that person’s views – precisely because there really is no advantage in posturing where there is no one to bargain with.
So I affirm people in their feelings of loss. But I try to dissuade them of their feelings of betrayal. People have advocated for what they believe in. Some have prevailed; some have not; but I see no general pattern of bad faith.
In sum, I was never being nice with opponents of same-sex marriage in order to secure some accommodation. Whether they fucked with me or not, I would have advocated the same thing. And I don’t see today’s decision as any kind of retribution for bigotry. Bigots have paid no price for their bigotry, because opponents of same-sex marriage were destined to lose this case even if they had behaved like angels.
It really isn’t about the merits of the advocates; it is, and always has been, about the merits of the issues.
You know, I’m not sure I agree.
And it’s not about my comment. I was having fun gloating (And I will gloat further!), but of course there’s no central authority, etc.
Where I think I differ with you is that I really think a half-measure of nationwide civil unions that were marriage-but-not-in-name might well have avoided nationwide SSM. Not for me, necessarily, but I don’t think it’s implausible that there would be plenty of SSM supporters who would move on to another fight rather than stick around for the “no, we want the name too” portion.
Now, yeah, there are a lot of reasons that things happened the way they did, but I don’t think we can ignore that GWB’s reelection strategy for 2004 hinged largely on picking a fight over SSM. It was very clear then that anyone advocating even a half-measure would be met with full force. Would things be different now if that hadn’t been his strategy? Hard to say, but I don’t think it’s implausible.
So yeah, it’s not like there was ‘one person’ or even ‘one group’ in charge one either side. OTOH, Karl Rove and George W. Bush exist and are people.
—Myca
I consider myself privileged to have witnessed this moment in history. I join in celebration with those who are a little freer today and I applaud the Supreme Court for making the right decision.
The fight for universal freedom and dignity is far from over – I wonder if it ever will be – but there can be no doubt that today was a major win for the good guys.
So . . . am I a bad person if I am enjoying watching the right-wingers go into apocalyptic meltdown?
Also, I think that this points to a problem in the ‘give no ground ever ever ever’ strategy that the GOP has embraced
in recent yearsfrom the very beginning with Obama, and to a central question of whether conservatism ought to “embrace gradual legal change so our social institutions have time to cope,” or “stand athwart history yelling stop.”Because as much as they like the second rhetorically, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, you’re likely to end up with a worse deal than if you just came to the bargaining table in the first place.
Note that I’m talking about political parties and legislative action here. Some random commenter over at First Things doesn’t have a bargaining table to go to, no, and yeah, he may well have held moderate opinions and seen then steamrolled, and sure that sucks for him. But I’m talking about something different.
—Myca
I’m not at all convinced that civil unions would have been an acceptable solution for more than a few years. When has any civil rights movement found separate-but-equal to be actually equal, or actually acceptable, for the long haul?
Hm — that’s thoughtful. I’m reminded of an exchange in Contact after David Drumlin beats out Ellie Arroway in a competition by pandering to the judges:
It’s a nice retort – but is it accurate? If you choose to “play nice” in a competitive environment, does it follow that others will do likewise? Or can we generally conclude that if you leave an opportunity for people to gain an advantage in a competitive environment, someone will exploit that opportunity?
Thus are Republican presidential campaigns screwed: Every candidate knows that he can gain an advantage in the primary by being more doctrinaire than thou – even as he knows that doing so will make the ultimate Republican candidate less palatable in the general election. If there are 13+ people vying for the nomination, and at any given moment roughly 12 of them will realize that they’re gonna lose unless they do something more to gain an advantage, is there any real prospect that the race can avoid going full-out doctrinaire?
Given that dynamic, did the Republican candidate ever really have a chance NOT to go anti-gay? If Bush had refrained, some other candidate would have done it and gotten the nomination. I don’t mean to absolve Bush of all responsibility, but to observe that the people who dangle the rewards are really the people who are most responsible. In Guantanamo, the guards did bad things – but the people who built the place created the reward structure. If Republican politics, candidates do bad things – but its Republican primary voters that dangle the rewards.
In short, yes, the 2004 Republican race poisoned any prospect of dealing with the same-sex marriage issue in anything like an adult fashion. But I see no plausible path that would not have led to the same outcome.
Ha! Sure, Karl Rove and George W. Bush exist — but are people…? Nice try, Myca.
I certainly agree morally, and like I said, I think I would have been in favor of full equality regardless, but “Civil Unions nationwide now vs maybe full marriage equality in 20 years if we fight like hell for it?”
I think a lot of activists would have been in favor of taking that deal, and I think if the deal was made, a lot of activism would have moved on to other issues.
I mean, hey, maybe you’re right on this. We really don’t have a way of knowing. What I’ll say is that the tack they took certainly didn’t seem to work out for them. Maybe none would have. I’d like that.
Well, I mean, what if Bush had been an incumbent president running for his second term, and thus hadn’t had to face a Republican primary or have any fear of having to face a Republican primary ever again in his life?
Y’know. Like he was, in 2004?
—Myca
I agree, and would add the corollary: When a Democrat like Obama or Clinton finally comes out in favor of marriage equality, I credit the Democratic base, not the politicians.
Myca:
I think this is definitely true of an issue like the Affordable Care Act. I’m not sure it’s true of marriage equality.
For one thing, it really wasn’t primarily a legislative issue. And even if a bunch of legislators hammer out a “civil unions” compromise, what prevents some lgbt activist who wasn’t at that negotiating table from going forward with a lawsuit anyway?
“There is no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle.”
And the old I.T. principle of GIGO rears it’s ugly head.
Sure, but I also think that the Supreme Court decision had a lot to do with SSM being legal in a majority of states already. And yeah, maybe it would have been legal in those states anyway, but I think “SSM vs. nothin'” is a different arguments for the courts to consider than “SSM vs. Civil Unions that grant all the rights and etc.,”
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with the way things have turned out, but I think that it was a near thing (this decision), it might well have gone the other way, and that Civil Unions would have muddied the water more.
—Myca
Paraphrased exchange I just had with Ben in my living room:
Ben: Kennedy seemed to be writing for Posterity (and maybe trying too hard).
Amp: Scalia seemed to be writing for World Net Daily.
Maybe you could explain the difference, as you see it?
—Myca
Whereas I like to think of Scalia as Ed Anger.
Myca:
I might agree with that as far as it goes, but I don’t think activists ever drove the issue. (Except in a tautological sense.) Professional activists probably agreed with my 90s self in not seeing the point of marriage. Ordinary people made it an issue because they wanted to get married. They won court cases because nobody ever had a good answer to the argument made in Hawaii in the early 90s, that the status quo was discrimination on the basis of sex. The state just decided not to address the question back then. Later responses, such as they were, seemed to assume a double standard – none of them would persuade me if applied to the speaker’s marriage – which means they just pushed the argument a step back. And yeah, the Supreme Court now used another argument, but that one would have sufficed.
I don’t think civil unions would have solved the legal problem. I also doubt they would have fully addressed the issue of people wanting to get married. So they might have delayed the outcome, but short of pushing it forward til after the robot apocalypse they’d have had no effect on the destination.
Forgot to add: there’s the media to consider. I think they did affect the timeline, but they did so by portraying gay people who were human*, and same-sex couples in loving relationships. If those portrayals’ real-life counterparts then said they wanted to get married, the media conspiracy could do little to stop it.
*Sadly, I don’t recall a good QUILTBAG robot couple.
Myca:
Reminds me of something Dan Savage wrote and said just over a year ago:
Maybe they had a shot at harm mitigation, maybe they didn’t. They certainly had a shot at treating LGBT people as though we were human. They chose another path.
And now they have a sad.
So did we. We endured a lot of grief. Their sad is about how it’s a little harder to kick us in the teeth, and our grief was the shredding of our hearts as we were dragged away from the bedsides of the people we loved most in all the world, our chosen family, the people we would have married, as those most-beloved people called out for us while they died without us.
There are no civil words to express what I think of their sad.
Grace
Recently Lioness and I drove to the deep south to attend the wedding of an old and very dear friend. I was, perforce, obliged to use public bathrooms at rest areas from New England to the Carolinas. I am lucky; I’m able to seem cis enough that no one saw fit to point and declare me a pariah. But that anxiety was my steady companion, every few hours.
That might have been our most immediate anxiety, but it wasn’t our biggest.
Our biggest anxiety was what would happen if one of us had a medical emergency and the other one had to prove that she could make medical decisions. We carried with us copies of our marriage license, the court order showing my name change, my birth certificate, and a letter from my physician explaining that I am transsexual and under his care (note the subordinating preposition) for that “condition”. We hoped that packet would be enough.
Lioness and I made our end-run around same-sex marriage prohibitions, 25 years ago, by presenting as an apparently heterosexual couple.
We had no idea if our marriage would be recognized by the medical staff who might treat us in an emergency, or the security officers the medical staff would call. If we were barred from making medical decisions for each other, or even being in the same room, it would be cold comfort five years later if we finally won a lawsuit.
Now, with today’s Supreme Court decision, Lioness and I don’t have to carry papers when we travel within our own country to ensure that our marriage is honored in a crisis. We simply say, “I’m her wife”, and everyone, everywhere, knows that they are legally obliged to say, “Okay.”
They know that they can’t drag me from her bedside, nor her from mine.
That anxiety is starting to slough away, and its wake is my tears.
Grace
That Dan Savage piece is incredibly intense and true, Grace. I’m going to send it to everyone I know.
And congratulations. :)
—Myca
I’m not sure how this should affect ur calculation ( as to whether or not to be nice to opponents of SSM) but I’m sure it should affect it.
The consensus opinion political scientist is that “the gay-marriage backlash did not help Bush”.
I’d like an anti-marriage equality person to explain what their loss actually is, in some meaningful, concrete, coherent terms. Haven’t seen that happen yet though.
I, for one, am outraged that several justices on the Supreme Court of the United States voted to change the definition of a word that has had the same definition for millennia.
Justice Scalia, writing about the geographical composition of the Court wrote, “[There is] [n]ot a single South- westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count).” Every dictionary I can find from the last 2,000 years (one) defines “Westerner” as “a native or inhabitant of the West, especially of the western U.S.” Clearly, California is in the western U.S.
I can’t believe that three unelected lawyers think that they can, by judicial fiat, just define California out of the western U.S. #Westernmeanswestern #Californiaiswest.
I care less about who it helped than who it hurt.
—Myca
This was clearly the right result, and I am overjoyed to have seen it come from the last Federal institution which I hold actual and apolitical respect for. (As opposed to the many institutions which I believe are necessary but despicable)
I disagree a little about the dissents. Robert’s dissent was evenhanded and properly solemn… but as I read it, it seems to assume that the majority are willfully inventing rights rather than making a ‘mistake’ in their jurisprudence. Scalia and Alito, naturally, do the same thing. Of the dissenters, it seems like Thomas alone wrote disagreement rather than bare condemnation. He might be wrong on the law, but at least he didn’t hide his disrespect for the majority under solemnity and measured tones.
(Also only Scalia addressed the equal protection argument, which he dispensed in his typical fashion by assuming that the broad language couldn’t possibly have indicated that it could be applied beyond the classes envisioned at its drafting. He is the least interesting Justice on 14th amendment stuff.)
Justice Kennedy’s rhetoric is exactly the sort of soaring language he used in Windsor, motivated by his obvious dislike of the current equal-protection analysis. I think that’s unfortunate- an announcement of, say, intermediate scrutiny for sexual inclination would have been a boon in many states for ancillary rights lawsuits.
Still, congratulations to everyone in America! There is no-one who does not benefit from the excision of injustice and hypocrisy from the laws of the land.
A happy day, a happy week. It reminds me of when apartheid officially ended in Souh Africa. It doesn’t make everything good immediately, but it’s the right thing to do and it does make a big difference for a lot of people – and it’s a day I didn’t believe would come this quickly. If you had told me, back when I was watching couples come to city hall in Worcester on the first day of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, that it would be only eleven years until it was legal and recognized in the whole U.S., I would not have believed you.
I went for a walk this morning and as I thought about this decision I just couldn’t stop grinning.
@Manju: The claim was about W’s intentions. Do you mean to say Ken Mehlman had it wrong? Does that make the closing statement of the article deliberate parody?
With great regret I think that’s unduely optimistic. It’s precisely those who would be minded to do those things who are also likely to be ignorant of their illegality as a result of the ruling, even if they are aware of the bare fact of the ruling’s existance. It is also precisely those who would be minded to do those things who are also likely to feel entitled to do them anyway, even if they are aware of their illegality.
I recommend you continue to carry your papers. They may help to persuade such a person not to violate your civil rights, though even that’s not guaranteed. That you showed these documents will also help you in any subsequent lawsuit, cold comfort though that would be over not having had your civil rights violated in the first place.
Hf…I don’t mean to say Ken Mehlman had it wrong. I wasn’t addressing intentions. I was addressing outcomes.
My larger point is that these Thomas-Frank-Like narratives are largely myths, and are mostly based on anecdotal bullshit. They are also dangerous, as they’ve made the Democratic Party gun-shy when it comes to standing up for their social values…since they (unjustly) fear losing (usually white) working-class voters over them.
There is an element of truth here, some nuance, and at least one big exception…which I can elaborate on if u r curious. But the “Bush won due to a SSM backlash” was one of those (self) destructive narratives. Political Scientists have long been tearing their hair out trying to convince their fellow Liberal-Dems to stand up for their social values, as they (by in large) ain’t going to lose elections over them.
I’m aware that Myca didn’t claim that they were. But since he’s gloating, I thought I’d give him even more to gloat about.
Thanks for that Dan Savage piece, especially.
My therapist lives in Simi Valley, a little red dot of Central California values voters just north of L.A. past the “mountains” where Manson sheltered his brood. As I leave her house headed over to the Conejo valley, I pass Ronald Reagan and his Library, and I always salute him with one finger, just for what Dan Savage said.
It’s a wonderful day to be queer.
Sam Cole:
Speaking as an expatriate Californian who grew up right on the coast, and who once-upon-a-time competed in speed events on horseback and helped horse-pack supplies into remote locations in the mountains, and also occasionally spent time in Arizona, where I quickly learned to tip and tap my boots before putting them on… Scalia is full of it. If I’m not a Westerner, then Westerners are pretty damn thin on the ground, and it’s no wonder the Supreme Court can’t find any.
Daran:
You’re right, of course, for the same reason that I’d recommend certain essentials in a car when travelling (flares, tow rope, blankets, water, axe handle).
And, actually, we still do.
But still; it’s now a LOT less likely that we’ll have to show them.
Grace
Hm. So – civil acts in one State are valid in another State even if the 2nd State has a law against it?
Three gay guys get on planes and fly to Vermont. Two of them go to the County clerks office, ask for a marriage license, get it and get married. The third goes to a County clerks office, asks for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, gets it (they have “constitutional carry”, you don’t even need a permit, but if you want one for use in reciprocity States all you have to do to get one is to ask for it), buys a gun and packs it legally in his checked luggage. All 3 fly back to their home state. The gay couple flies to a state where gay marriage is illegal. The 3rd guy flies to a State where you have to go through a training class, undergo a background check and pay about $600 total to get a CCP. The gay couple files a joint income tax return as a married couple. The gay single guy straps on his gun as a concealed weapon and takes a ride. State 1 says that the couple is not married, but they point to their marriage license and the decision of the Supreme Court that says that the civil act of one State is valid in another. In State 2, a cop stops the 3rd guy for speeding and asks if he has a weapon. He replies truthfully. The cop arrests him, but he too points to his permit and makes the same argument.
Yes, I know that this decision was specific to gay marriage. But the principle has been established. Expect the NRA to be in court within a year. Maybe 6 months.
Ron – I’m not entirely sure I follow you. The SCOTUS didn’t find that states have to allow things that are illegal if they are legal in other states. They found that gay marriage bans are unconstitutional. Following the supreme court decision, there are no more states in which gay marriage is illegal, hence your example doesn’t apply.
Also, states have never been able to require individual state marriage licenses for heterosexual couples – As just one example, I have a pair of heterosexual friends who got married in New York state, and now live in Michigan. Michigan was never able to require them to get remarried in that states.
So, there are two differences between firearms and gay marriage that invalide your hypothetical – first, it’s has not been ruled unconstitutional for states to require training for concealed carry licenses, and secondly, it is currently accepted that states do not have to automatically accept licenses from other states. I don’t think the reasoning from the current SCOTUS decision affects either.
It’s worth noting that already in 1967, Loving vs. Virginia established that no state can reject an interractical marriage performed in another state. If the NRA could not use that as a precedant before, why could they now?
RonF- this was not a full faith and credit case. Further, full faith and credit has little or no connection to concealed carry. Permits of that sort are authorizations to do a thing. You can be permitted to do something in one state but not another. Full faith and credit issues tend to involve legal findings or determinations or declarations, because it’s no good letting people get out of those by crossing state lines. A good (completely informal and not at all approved by any court or legal scholar) rule of thumb is that if you’re agreeing to do something or being bound to do something, that might be full faith and credit. If you’re getting the privilege to do something you otherwise might not, it isn’t.
Full faith and credit applies in an interesting way to marriage because it’s traditionally been held that marriage is a full faith and credit issue (it’s primary effect is to bind you to do things you might not otherwise do), but historically states have diverged significantly in marriage laws and practices, and have been able to refuse to acknowledge the marriages they most strongly object to. For example, my state, a few generations ago, had an influx of immigrants from a neighboring state that was a lot more accepting of fourteen year old girls marrying their uncles. My state prohibits that. So people would cross state lines, get married, come back, and eventually create interesting appellate cases about the validity of their unions. My state wasn’t required to acknowledge that, but the legal precedent for why not was never the tightest.
That was an issue for a while with gay marriage. But as of last week it stopped being an issue. The SC didn’t rely on that law, they rendered it inapplicable as a consequence of their ruling.
That being said, gun rights groups have wanted full faith and credit for concealed carry for a while, and anybody can file a lawsuit. So who knows. I wouldn’t be optimistic about their chances though.
Wikipedia article on full faith and credit is pretty good
RonF:
No. That’s not a true statement.
On the other hand, these are true: states cannot deny Constitutional rights to people, and must provide equal protection of the law to different classes of people (in both cases, absent a compelling reason why not).
On a completely different topic, like you, I think that CCW licenses should function basically like driver’s licenses; if you have a license from your state of residence, you should be able to carry elsewhere, too. However, this is not a parallel with a marriage license, because a license to do something which is otherwise prohibited (like drive a car) is not the same thing as a contractual agreement with another person (like enter into a marriage contract).
One substantial difference is that you can get married anywhere and the marriage is supposed to good anywhere, in perpetuity (absent divorce or annulment), without review, while a license (a) must be obtained from the local authority where you reside, and if you move, must be obtained from the new local authority and (b) typically, must be periodically renewed.
Now, before you point out that the right to keep and bear arms is a Constitutional right which the states deny to people, yes, I agree. But that issue’s been litigated many times, and won or lost depending on the particulars. It’s not a parallel case. My privately-owned firearms are inherently more dangerous to other people than my marriage. It is their purpose to be dangerous; if they were not dangerous, I would not own and carry them. No one can steal my marriage. No one can mishandle my marriage and hurt themselves, even to the extent of dropping my marriage on their toes.
Additionally, sadly, my marriage cannot be pointed at hostile people to motivate them not to harm me and mine.
My marriage cannot, in fact, be used to threaten or harm someone in any way… which, sadly, is probably the only reason my marriage is now certainly valid everywhere in my country. I say “sadly”, because that’s not the argument which should have won. The argument which should have carried the day, long ago, is one we all should have learned in kindergarten: because it’s fair. But the argument which actually won the day was the manifest inability of the opponents of marriage equality to demonstrate a single substantial way that marriage equality would hurt anyone.
Not so, with guns. Guns are designed to make holes in material things. People’s bodies are material things. There’s a competing harm, and that competing harm is the basis of all counterarguments against the free use and ownership of firearms.
Grace
I was going to say, as another response to the Myca – nobody.really debate about being nice to opponents of SSM, that the issue follows the trajectory or Interracial Marriage.
Basically, there’s a generational gap. Bigots die and are replaced by more educated and enlightened people. End of story. (So go ahead and be mean…minds aren’t really being changed anyway).
But Nate Silver has crunched the numbers and argues that “one-half to two-thirds of the rise in support for gay marriage has been a result of people changing their minds on the issue.”
Hmmm.
Just noting that, with a marriage performed today in Louisiana, this ruling has been fully implemented & there have been same-sex marriages in all fifty states.
Harlequin:
I take your meaning, and I celebrate this milestone, too.
That said, my wife is fond of pointing out that trans people have been getting married since forever, provided they could arrange matters such that their birth certificates were heterosexual, which means that there have been same-sex marriages in every state for decades — the states were only able to pretend there weren’t by refusing to acknowledge trans people’s gender.
For instance, a close friend of mine lived in New Hampshire before there was marriage equality in New Hampshire. She transitioned in New Hampshire and was able to get the gender maker changed on her New Hampshire license in the standard way, at that time: by presenting proof of genital surgery. However, her home state did not permit her birth certificate to be altered, so that still said “male”. Now, she’s not the most feminine woman around, but there’s no doubt that she vibes female; no one ever figures out that she’s trans before someone tells them. So it caused some consternation in the local town clerk’s office when she and her wife-to-be applied for a marriage license and plonked their birth certificates down. The clerk tried like hell to find a reason not to issue it, but in the end they had to.
Suppose her partner had transitioned? Then everyone could agree that it was an opposite-sex marriage… until only one of them got their birth certificate updated, at which point we’re back in the weeds.
In some states (cough, Texas), whether your marriage was legal could change when you crossed a county line — on the basis of which judges thought you were male or female.
Now, with this ruling, clerks can all stop with the tomfoolery (even if it has to be pried from the fingers of some of them), and trans people lucky enough to have documents line up right can stop outing themselves as a necessary solution to state intransigence, and everyone can just get on with business.
Yay!
Grace
I’ve seen this within my family. A lot of older relatives who were still saying “Well, I guess they can have some kind of recognition, but it shouldn’t be called marriage” ten years ago are now fully in favor of legal same-sex marriage. I’d attribute a large amount of the change to seeing one of my cousins marry another woman and have two kids, so now, for the older generation, “gay marriage” doesn’t just mean some people on TV — it means the little girl that they watched grow up who’s now an adult with little kids of her own. (And it doesn’t hurt that they’re among the few cousins of that generation who are raising their kids Jewish, even though my cousin’s wife is not Jewish.)
Absolutely, and I’m not really surprised. I think that the massive public debate we’ve had over the past decade or two has really given both sides a chance to make their best arguments, and I think it’s become blindingly obvious to everyone that the anti-SSM folks simply don’t have good arguments, aside from their anti-LGBT animus.
I think that there’s a lot of cynicism out there (and a lot of it is warranted), but minds do change. Arguments do persuade people. It is a worthwhile thing to publicly debate.
Huh … I don’t think that’s a debate I was having. FTR, I think it’s good to be ‘nice’ to them, but I also think it’s important to maintain the truth – that opposition to equal rights for LGBT people is rooted in prejudice/bigotry/homophobia. I do have sympathy for folks who feel like the world is moving too fast, but neither their discomfort nor my sympathy for it comes close to outweighing the constitutional guarantee of equal rights.
—Myca
I’ve always attributed it to straight up shaming. Gayarriafe is considered such an obviously good thing by basically everyone under 35 that it’s astounding. Even a substantial percentage of the conservatives beneath that age feel that way, sometimes with an almost belligerently defensive aggression since it’s an issue liberals use successfully as a cudgel. When your kids are so pro gay marriage that they’re pretty clear about viewing support for it as a litmus year for being a decent human being, I think it’s hard for most older people to maintain meaningful opposition.
I know that at least the ten year walk-back of opposition to gay marriage I’ve seen in my extended family has consistently seemed to be a defensive process of qualifying their opposition to avoid moral criticism, over and over, until opposition turned into lukewarm support.
…Though Ellen was a huge influence on at least one person. Huge. You have no idea. For years it was like, rar, gay agenda, they’re destroying marriage, we gotta fight back, rar, but not Ellen she’s cool don’t talk trash about my girl. Then Again that person was surprised by the workout dude with the sequins so gaydar wasn’t her thing.
Bingo.
And see, this is why I don’t extend ‘courtesy’ all the way to “pretending that prejudice isn’t prejudice.” It’s 100% okay to say that opposing equal rights makes someone a bad person. This kind of opprobrium is part of how minds get changed.
I said a while back that we ought to react to people expressing homophobic views as though they’d just taken a shit in public – disgust, revulsion, disbelief, distancing. I stand by that. We should also engage in reasoned debate and discussion. It’s not all one or the other.
—Myca
You’re not going to get any objection to that from me, save that I think that if you’re going to do that it’s important to take seriously the moral ramifications of a planned course of action in which you intentionally inflict emotional distress on people in order to influence them. You know, your human fallibility in target selection, chance that the reaction won’t be what you hoped for, undermining of content neutral norms against public shaming. The same sorts of concerns involved with punching someone in the nose, which, you know, sometimes you gotta do. Just, with a healthy respect for the ways that can go wrong.
While this week’s tears of rage and hate are amusing to witness, the real entertainment value lies in years to come, as staunchly regressive bigots scramble to rewrite history and pretend they were ‘obviously in favor of marriage equality all along, in fact it was the Christian Right who led the charge while useless liberals did nothing.’
Sure, with the caveat that while everyone has an assumed right to be free of my nose punches, nobody has an assumed right to my social approval.
I think we can assume that whoever’s on the Republican ticket next year will oppose marriage equality. There may even be some burbling about a constitutional amendment banning it. I’ll bet that by 2024, though, it will be a nonissue. I fucking hope, anyway.
—Myca
You were fairly specifically writing about not only the fact of your disapproval, but also how you treat people as a result of it. The difference between the two is integral to virtually every norm against bigotry that makes a claim to being a rawlsian public reason.
Patrick:
A homosexual animal with a long neck?
Mobile. Gay marriage. Sorry.
Hmm … I think I’d like to distinguish between ‘how my disapproval manifests in the moment,’ and ‘how I treat people whose views I disapprove of.’
I don’t think it’s okay to be a jerk to people you disagree with just because you disagree with them, but when someone actively expresses discriminatory views, it is they who have ‘initiated force,’ such as it is, and reacting with disgust is perfectly acceptable.
Just as the calculus around ‘punching someone in the nose because you know they dislike you’ and ‘punching someone in the nose because they just punched you in yours‘ are different.
In fact, I’d say that when someone advocates against same-sex-marriage, against adoption by gay parents, or whichever, they’re generally advocating using the machinery of law to deny someone legal equality. That’s a far greater initiation of force than expressing social disapproval, even extreme, nose-wrinking-in-revulsion-like-you-stepped-in-shit social disapproval.
—Myca
Nate has me wondering about Interracial Marriage, now. He dismisses it by noting that took much longer. That’s obviously true, but only because Race had been a major topic of public debate in America since before the Founding.
But look what happens if we control for the amount of years, beginning when both issues were at approximately 60%-40% (Opposition to Support)
Opposition/Support for SSM laws:
2001 … 57 … 35
2002
2003 … 58 … 33
2004 … 60 … 31
2005 … 53 … 36
2006 … 55 … 33
2007 … 54 … 37
2008 … 51 … 39
2009 … 54 … 37
2010 … 48 … 42
2011 … 45 … 46
Opposition/Support for Interracial Marriage Laws:
1964 … 60 … 40
1965
1966
1967
1968 … 56 … 44
1969
1970 … 50 … 50
1971
1972 … 40 … 60
1973 … 39 … 61
1974 … 35 … 65
I see a steeper trajectory for IR-Marriage.
SSM data:
http://www.pewresearch.org/data-trend/domestic-issues/attitudes-on-gay-marriage/
Interracial Marriage data:
“Racial attitudes in America: trends and interpretations ” by Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo.
Page 106.
Manju: do you know where Schuman is getting his data from? Gallup has been polling that question continuous since the 50s and has a hugely different result.
Likewise, their same sex marriage data, so we can compare like with like.
I’m also struck by your decision to include 2001 – 2011 as your timeframe for same sex marriage, whereas you use 1964-1974 as your timeframe for interracial marriage. 1964 is a terrible place to start the window. Overturning interracial marriage bans in the courts started with Perez v. Sharp, in 1948. Of course, we don’t have public opinion polling going back that far, but by the time you start the clock, this had been a point of activism for 16 years.
(Further reference: Loving v Virginia was decided in 1967. Goodridge v Department of Public Health was decided in 2004. Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015.)
xkcd has SSM vs interracial marriage, availability and polling answers, rather nicely visualized.
Grace, of course you’re right–I apologize for the error.
Schuman & Co are getting their #’s from NORC’s GSS but, more importantly, that survey question asks if one opposes or favors laws against interracial marriage. Gallap simply asks if one approves or disapproves of IRM.
There’s a major gap between the two IRM questions. That’s an interesting phenomenon, and perhaps distinguishes IRM from SSM (I hesitate only because the SSM questions appear to focus on laws only, with no corresponding questions about approval outside of changing the law).
Schuman & Co do actually use the Gallup numbers. On page 118, they graph them both…demonstrating that while the Gallup numbers (for approval) are much lower, the two lines largely parallel each other.
Also, these numbers are Whites Only, so opposition to Interracial Marriage is exaggerated (blacks have a much higher support on both questions…majority support the whole way thru, I think…and certainly by 1968).
I started with 1964 and 2001 respectively because both issues are at roughly a 60 to 40 Oppose to Support ratio at that time. Then I just took them out the same amount of years.
I understand that. IRM certainly took much longer. You could justify starting the clock in the 1700s. In contrast, meaningful public debate on SSM started maybe 20 years ago and completely flips within that timeframe. The comparison is stunning.
But its also Apples to Oranges. Why? Those were different times. People were poorer, less educated, the technology wasn’t there, no TV, no Internet, less knowledge, less democracy, etc.
Gunnar Myrdal famously argued that Northerners were simply unaware of what was happening to Blacks in the South. When made aware, we did see shifts. The lynchings of Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels in 1937, and subsequent gruesome descriptions in the Newspapers, was followed by a Gallup poll showing huge majorities in favor of anti-lynching legislation.
Industrialized societies with advanced technological infrastructures change faster. So if you try to control for that and look at IRM, or for that matter a variety of racism metrics, you’ll see, beginning around the 1960s, a similar rate of ascent.
Ok, Gallup is showing SSM going from 27% approval in 1996 to 60% approval in 2015. 19 years.
So in 1973 they have IRM at 29%. Staring there, since it’s close to 27%, it takes 24 years for IRM to reach 64% (1997).
Minor correction, Ben Lehman: Goodridge was decided in 2003, and same-sex marriages in Massachusetts started in 2004, on a beautiful day in May.