sweet, go massachussetts

Trying to use the guarantee clause? I don't want to hear any more conservative bitching about "frivolous lawsuits"...

They're complaining that if Mass. recognizes gay marriage that it would undermine local state sovereignty of other states by forcing them to recognize a marriage that in their eyes could be illegal.

My (limited) understanding is that the defense of marriage act, which passed in the late 90's, already prohibits this from happening. Which means that this is and always has been a complete non-issue. I'm not sure why Kerry didn't bring that up during the election process as it seems like a slam-dunk argument, but then again his campaign did some stupid things.

i love living in boston, and working in cambrdige in liberal heaven!!

Sweet!

Now we just need a gay couple from Oregon to get married in Massachusetts, then go home and have their marriage deemed illegal by the state, then they have an actioanble case that will work it's way through the courts and we can be done with this silly mess.

Right, but the there is Supreme Court doctrine extending back more than a century that the "Repubican form of givernment" clause is a "political question" beyond the scope of judicial review. Moreover, if this decision would "force" other states to recognize SSM, it would because of the full faith and credit clause, so the argument seems to be that the Constitution is unconstitutional. Okey-dokey...

I think DOMA would be found to be unconstitutional. It hasn't been challenged yet, because no state had legalized gay marriage, but now a case can actually be brought before the court.

Funny how this has worked out. The SCOTUS refuses to hear a case, virtually guaranteeing that they will hear one in the near term that actually involves a legally married gay couple. I don't think this is coincidence.

PS, Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country.

Which has absolutely no bearing on whether gays should have the right to have their relationship recognized by the state.

If you mean b/c same-sex marriages are too recent to be a meaningful part of such a statistic, then I guess I would agree. But I would think divorce rate more generally would be very relevant to the issue of the so-called sanctity of marriage that is so frequently and nebulously cited by opponents of same-sex marriage. I guess it'll be a number of years before we can point to some MA stats and reach the rather unsurprising conclusion that gay couples are no more or less likely to divorce than straight couples.

I definitely think the SC is going to manage its docket in the area pretty carefully--I agree that they're going to avoid addressing DOMA for as long as they can. In this case, though, the legal issue wasn't serious; there was no chance the SC would hear it. To argue that state court interpretations of state law intrude on the rights of other states is so transparently stupid it was a waste of time and money to even file the briefs.

But it does have bearing on how reprehensible George Bush is when he sneeringly denounces the citizens of Massachusets as "immoral" because they disagree with his theocratic bigorty...

Catholic Action League!

If it wasn't for activist judges, blacks and whites would still be going to "seperate but equal" schools. Get with it.

You're missing the point. The divorce rate has zilch to do with the question of whether two people have the right to get married. It's a statistic thrown up by the left to counter the 'sanctity' of marriage argument put out by the Christians, but it's a null argument because it has fuck all to do with whether a person's rights should be enforced. What gay couples do after they get married has little to do with the argument of allowing them to marry in the first place.