Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

I'm curious about how the Kevin Keller story came to be. Somebody had to think it was risky, right? Guess I could Google it, but Phil and Alfred, do you guys have any info you can share?

congrats, k3vin!

Paul posted this today on his FB page - he showed up as Quote of the Day on Comic Book Resources:

“I guess the idiot lunatic fringe does some bitching and moaning about it. But the reaction that I’ve seen has been positive. It’s been ‘This is great—thank you! It’s about time! These are the kind of stories we want to see.’ And if people can’t deal with it, well, go away, don’t read it. That’s okay. I don’t care what you think. [...] When the story broke a month or two ago, there was a comment left on some Fox News site, and they didn’t cite me by name, but it was essentially ‘Whoever would write and draw and publish such a story should get AIDS and die.’ And you know … I thought that was great. [Laughs] I have so much power that I can write a simple comic-book story and that can cause you to wish me death! I am mighty. [Laughs]”

From a longer interview here.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/gay-marriage-137909658.html

Wash. has enough votes to legalize gay marriage
By RACHEL LA CORTE and MIKE BAKER Associated Press Published: Jan 23, 2012 at 12:11 PM PST Last Updated: Jan 23, 2012 at 12:52 PM PST

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Wash. has enough votes to legalize gay marriage
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Gay marriage proponents urged their supporters not to become complacent following news the Legislature has enough votes to make Washington the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Democratic Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen says she'll support the measure, becoming the 25th vote needed to pass the bill out of the Senate.

The House already has enough support, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has endorsed the plan. Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a Seattle Democrat who is the sponsor of the House gay marriage bill, said at a news conference that the issue is not yet resolved. It's likely that opponents of gay marriage will oppose the measure on a statewide ballot.

If ultimately approved, Washington would join New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia in approving gay marriage.

dccccccccccccccccccccccc

rong washington

Dan Savage is getting glitterbombed for being pro-gay marriage.

To wit...

"Savage is taking on being a speaker and leader in this movement. We have to take that into account. He's part of a broader [group] of gay, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied gay men focused on gay-marriage priorities. We want to say those priorities are messed up."

I want marriage eq in all states so Savage can disappear

isn't it already legal in dcccc

If ultimately approved, Washington would join New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia in approving gay marriage.

Thread that needle.

Why do Towleroad links always get messed up. Didn't find the story about Savage, but still got to see this, which is always a treat

http://towleroad.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c730253ef016761054204970b-pi

Passed the Washington state senate, will pass in the House next week and will be signed by the governor.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2012/02/01/state-senate-approves-same-sex-marriage/

Yup. :)

Prop 8 ruled unconstitutional

and now on to the SC

question now is is this going to be THE defining Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage

When Scalia concocts his spurious line of reasoning to reinstate Prop 8, you can be sure he'll be joined by Roberts, Alito and Thomas. That just leaves one vote lacking for some more mind-bogglingly bad reasoning to become precedent and start infecting the well for other rights issues. Let's hope that vote is lacking.

I can't see Kennedy siding with them on this, but anything is possible.

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/btb/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Prop8Ruling.pdf

lol @ boxturtlebulletin that is awesome

Sully says the court's website was down

I've just always loved the "if we allow gay marriage, next people will be marrying box turtles!" logic

It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right… Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife. - John Cornyn, box turtle enthusiast

Boozhwa 02/07/12 13:10
Which constitution did they use? Is it one Ginsburg would recommend?

you all laugh but i still can't marry my box turtle thanks to this screwed-up society and i feel really oppressed about it

It's a very narrow ruling. They don't even need to overturn the 9th Circuit judgment for the precedent to be messy.

This is just from the headnote, mind you, I haven't had time to read the whole thing. But basically the ruling is made on the grounds that because California had substantive equality in a lot of ways, the ONLY potential purpose of Prop 8 was to deny the term 'marriage' and this is discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The ruling doesn't make any holding on whether there are potentially legitimate reasons for gay marriage bans in contexts where there is less equality generally.

i.e. There is plenty of space for the Supremes to affirm this ruling and phrase its meaning narrowly as 'it is unconstitutional to ban gay marriage when a state has already granted gays substantial rights', while continuing to permit the more discriminatory states to continue as they've been doing.

Which would be pretty typical, no?

any chance SCOTUS won't grant cert?

It's a possibility it won't.

Extreme narrowness of grounds for judicial opinion in the pursuit of freedom is no vice. But it is the sort of virtue that, if it turned sideways, would disappear entirely.

Maggie speaks

that headline is OTM

7 million irrational bigots can't be wrong

No point in beating around the bush.

what kind of phrase is "ill-natured logic" anyway

logic that someone doesn't like

As an instructor with no formal legal training it still amazes me how often people forget that when they read The Great Gatsby or Macbeth in high school nobody agreed on interpretations.

I'm getting tired of waiting to marry Alfred in all these states

I'm claiming him in MS, bud.

Gonna marry him in WA very soon.

has polygamy been OK'd by the Supreme Court

only in OK

i've set up a bevmo gift registry

Toobin doesn't think SC will even take this up, given the ruling's California-specific nature. kinda clever of the judges to rule this way, if their intention was to avoid a SC showdown

Gonna marry him in WA very soon.

I hope so but I bet it won't be too hard to find 120,577 assholes who want put it to a vote and I'm kind of scared how that will turn out.

Eugene Volokh has some thoughts. Worth reading.

i'm gonna quote this one bit at length:

a. First, note that this debate is just about the label “marriage,” and thus about the message that the label sends. The court concluded that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional because this symbolism mattered, and mattered a lot — the message is injurious to same-sex couples’ (and individuals’) dignity, and may lead to more societal discrimination against gays and lesbians. But if this symbolism of “disapproval of … [same-sex] relationships” (Op. 77) is so significant, then it may be plausibly believed to subtly push some people away from same-sex relationships to opposite-sex relationships. To so conclude, you don’t need to believe that gays and lesbians, in the sense of people who are solely attracted to people of the same sex, can be “cured” in the sense of being turned straight. You only need to focus on the substantial number of bisexuals, and assume that their behavior can be affected, in some instances and for some people, by the message of “disapproval of …. [same-sex] relationships.”

This is relevant because it bears on how the Ninth Circuit responded to the arguments that the desire to have a greater fraction of children be raised by opposite-sex biological parent couples forms a rational basis for the law:

We need not decide whether there is any merit to the sociological premise of [the Prop. 8 backers’] first argument — that families headed by two biological parents are the best environments in which to raise children — because even if [the backers] are correct, Proposition 8 had absolutely no effect on the ability of same-sex couples to become parents or the manner in which children are raised in California” (pp. 56-57) is beside the point, when it comes to the rational basis test.

But family formation is not just driven on who has the legal “ability” to become parents. It is also driven by social attitudes. It is not irrational to conclude that, if the refusal to recognize same-sex marriage has powerful symbolic effect — which is what the Ninth Circuit argued in striking down this refusal — it may likewise have a powerful symbolic effect when it comes to people’s choices about whom to parent with. As it happens, I’m quite skeptical that this effect will be substantial enough to make a difference, and I on balance think that recognizing full same-sex marriage is good policy. But under the rational basis test that the Ninth Circuit is purporting to apply, a court must uphold a law so long as it rests on a plausible view of the facts, regardless of whether the judges agree with the lawmakers on those facts.

this is such crap!

It is not irrational to conclude that, if the refusal to recognize same-sex marriage has powerful symbolic effect — which is what the Ninth Circuit argued in striking down this refusal — it may likewise have a powerful symbolic effect when it comes to people’s choices about whom to parent with.

I don't agree. One of the comments called him out on this.

i'm not buying volokh's threading the needle here on bisexuals choices, like at all

a. gay marriage opponents say their effort is really about kids because kids turn out best when coming from a married straight couple

b. the ninth circuit says that's bogus, opposing gay marriage has no effect at all on how kids are raised or cared for, so the effect is just discrimination and animus

c. volokh says well, of (x) number of bisexuals, (x-y) number of them could opt for a straight marriage instead of a gay relationship, so the law could have the effect of making more "straight" couples. so if you buy the two straight married parents = better kids argument, then a gay marriage ban will have some (tiny) good social effect.

gaming out the behavior of bi people, i mean, this is just silly

xp