Though New Hampshire last week became the sixth state to allow same-sex marriage, 57 percent of Americans oppose granting such marriages legal status, according to a recent Gallup poll. But 69 percent of Americans surveyed favor allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military, according to the poll. The biggest increase in support — which essentially equates to repealing the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — comes from conservatives, who have gone from 46 percent in favor in 2004 to 58 percent last month. Also, support from people who identify themselves as weekly churchgoers increased from 49 to 60 percent.
“Eight and a half years after their epic partisan battle over the fate of the 2000 presidential election, the lawyers David Boies and Theodore B. Olson appeared on the same team on Wednesday as co-counsel in a federal lawsuit that has nothing to do with hanging chads, butterfly ballots or Electoral College votes,” the New York Times reported. Boies and Olson are challenging California’s ban on gay marriage, which the California Supreme Court upheld this week. The former rivals are arguing that Proposition 8 violates the federal Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process.
First there was the gay marriage question at the Miss USA pageant. Now Miss California Carrie Prejean is in hot water for posing for racy modeling pictures several years ago. What’s more, she assured the Miss California USA pageant, after one of the photos was released, that only one photo existed. But then a second was released, and there reportedly are two more. Prejean had signed a contract with Miss California USA stating she has never been photographed nude or partially nude. As a result, she could lose her Miss California crown. Oh, the horror. Also, it was reported earlier that the Miss California USA pageant paid for Prejean to get breast implants.
Who knew there was so much scandal potential in a beauty pageant? Will Prejean continue to be a heroine of the religious right?
Washington is bracing for the release Friday of the documentary “Outrage.” The film outs several politicians who campaign against gay rights but are allegedly gay themselves.
Meanwhile, this week Maine became the fifth state to approve gay marriage, and the Washington, D.C., city council voted to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere.
Who would have thought that the Miss USA pageant could become a political battleground? But since Miss California contestant Carrie Prejean expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage during Sunday night’s pageant, there has been heated debate about her comments. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, who asked the question about whether more states should allow gay marriage, has been blasting Prejean. Others, such as commentator Roland Martin, have defended Prejean for being honest about her beliefs. Prejean sticks by her answer, which she thinks cost her the crown. “It’s not about being politically correct. For me, it’s about being biblically correct,” she said in an interview this week.
I didn’t watch the pageant, and I’m not sure I’ve ever watched it — even when it was held in Wichita. Is gay marriage a normal type of question for contestants? I thought they just talked about world peace and ending hunger.
A unanimous decision by the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court approved marriage for couples of the same sex and brought the nation a step closer toward realizing its promise of equality and justice. The new decision says marriage is a civil contract and should not be defined by religious doctrine or views. The immediate impact of Iowa’s ruling was to make the failure to respect gay people’s freedom to marry, by courts and legislatures in states like New York, seem all the more shameful. — New York Times editorial
You really can’t have “gay marriage,” you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say. The human race understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn’t suddenly is. The Iowa court’s decision in the gay marriage case is pure nonsense. We’re reminded again — as with Roe v. Wade, the worst decision in the history of human jurisprudence — of the reasons judges should generally step back from making social policy. — William Murchison, Dallas Morning News
“The battle over same-sex marriage is on the way to being lost,” columnist Cal Thomas concluded. And for those on the political and religious right who are intent on continuing the battle, Thomas asked: “What poses a greater threat to our remaining moral underpinnings? Is it two homosexuals living together? Or is it the number of heterosexuals who are divorcing and the increasing number of children born to unmarried women, now at nearly 40 percent according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?”
Kansans who warned that gay marriage could be coming to the state via the courts can now point to nearby Iowa as proof of the possibility. Iowa lacks a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which Kansas passed in 2005. And in a unanimous decision upholding a lower-court ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court made it legal Friday for same-sex couples to wed, putting Iowa in the company of Massachusetts and Connecticut. As social conservatives plan countermeasures, gay couples are planning weddings to begin as soon as April 24. If the decision holds, Iowa could become a magnet for marrying couples and see $160 million in economic benefit over the next three years, according to a study by the University of California at Los Angeles. The future of this contentious issue seems reliant on demographics, though, given that legalizing gay marriage is supported by 41 percent of Americans under 45 and only 18 percent of Americans over 65.
The people of California did not do anything drastic. They simply voted to enshrine the definition of natural marriage as one man and one woman in the state constitution. What does this victory mean? The people of California want to wrest control of the legal definition of marriage from the judiciary. The people of California want religious groups to be free to operate within their own value systems. People don’t want to unleash discrimination suits and other forms of legal harassment against religious bodies that hold that marriage is between a man and a woman. – Jennifer Roback Morse, the Ruth Institute, for National Review Online
How people can vote for the first African-American president in American history while simultaneously voting to discriminate against gays is testament to the incoherence of American politics and the lack of clear-cut philosophy guiding people’s choices. Discrimination against others just because you don’t like how they live their lives is against the very essence of the two pillars of America – liberty and equality.
I keep hearing about how this will right itself in the long run, that it’s just a matter of waiting until this new generation gets old enough and then gay rights will magically be “granted.” I hope that’s true. But to paraphrase a saying that’s been overused lately – in the long run all of today’s gay partners and gay parents will be dead. These soothing tones of “patience” and “don’t worry” don’t mean much when you consider that you only have one life to live. – digbysblog.blogspot.com
