The Last Marriage Rally?

David F David F

We attended the rally/celebration yesterday to celebrate the excellent outcome of Obergefell v. Hodges, confirming that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law does indeed include LGBTQ people.

It would be easy to say, well, look at us 61 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and we still have to fight racism.  42 years after Roe v. Wade and we still have to fight for women's autonomy over their own bodies.

But the reason we cite those landmarks is that they switched the game.  They each put the forces of regression and ignorance on the defensive.  Enlightenment took the high ground.  That doesn't end the fight, but it gives the right side the advantage.

So was this the last marriage rally?  Probably not.  But all future rallies will be anchored in this position of strength and defending it, not clawing for something more from a position of having less.

It was a good week for the Supreme Court.  They found in favor of an expanded view of the Fourth Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.  They found the common sense to interpret the Affordable Care Act the way Congressmen all said they should, the only obvious way.

As a Facebook wag pointed out, it was a pretty lousy week to be an authoritarian racist homophobe who thinks poor people should be denied health care.  Because the week was capped off when Justice Anthony Kennedy, a man whose name has seldom been linked to the phrase "stirring prose", wrote:

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. 
read the whole opinion here. I have to go now.  Someone's chopping onions.

You should also read: