A federal judge stuck down Pennsylvania’s Ban today.
Congratulations to the residents of Pennsylvania.
All of the Northeast is now Blue on the Map below. Woo Hoo!
Please share widely!
Marriage Equality comes to Pennsylvania…
Reality-based commentary on politics.
And hopefully this momentum can now continue. I am fairly certain a majority of Americans must live in an equality state by this point.
Let’s get to 50!
Mother Jones has a similar map to this one, and another one showing the pace of change.
Always proud to be from Massachusetts. Our ‘radical social experiment’ is quickly becoming the norm, for the simple fact that it works.
According to HRC
Not really!
now, every time I look at my own comments, I have see Santorum’s stupid face. Damn It.
Judge Jones is a Geo. W. Bush appointee.
Hurrah for my old state! This one has been a long time coming -so glad they finally joined the team!
All of this hangs by a thread named Justice Kennedy.
So far, there is no conflict of circuits. But of course, there are several appeals at the circuit level, so that could change.
Kennedy is a pretty inconsistent and brutal justice to try and peg down in one camp or the other, but one of the few areas he has been consistent in not only voting for but passionately arguing on behalf of, is gay rights. His opinion in Windsor, in Lawrence v Texas, and in other cases seems to indicate his preference for expanded gay rights. he also voted to strike down Prop 8-which seems to indicate that when he has to choose between his two loves (state rights and expanded gay rights) he will side with gay rights. Pretty hard to argue that a court that could overturn a voter approved statewide ban in one state, couldn’t do so elsewhere.
My thought is, and David, fenway, or other attorneys can feel free to correct me, is that those two decisions laid the groundwork for state courts to overrturn these bans creating the groundswell we are seeing, and that if it does end up in the hands of the court again, then there is legitimacy, both from a majority of Americans living in equality states and favoring it in the polls, and legislative and judicial legitimacy at the state level, to allow a sweeping ruling federalizing gay marriage.
It will play out the way Ginsberg argued abortion rights would’ve played out had the court not stepped in so soon and in such an inarticulate manner as it did with Roe.
They ruled on whether the Prop 8 proponents had standing. Big difference. So you’ll have to take the Prop 8 case out of your Kennedy calculations.
But it would seem out of character compared to his other rulings. I have to agree with Scalia on this one point-if you say the state has no compelling interest to regulate against sex and other private activities between two consenting adults of the same gender presumably it has no compelling interest in regulating against the benefits civil marriage would provide. And Kennedy did state that, and presumably the rest of the constitutional house of cards propping up anti-equality legislation would fall apart.
was Kennedy’s latching onto the meaning of marriage to the kids of s-s couples. It seems clear that in his gut, he feels that s-s marriage is a good and positive thing.
but I think he has been strong in the past on the equal protection argument, which the recent wave of decisions have all centered around to some degree.
I have also read somewhere, I can’t remember where, where it is believed that SCOTUS is waiting for a vigorous argument on both sides to decide this nationwide, so that there is no “straw-man” complaint about the final decision. And that Utah might be the state that pushes this to the SCOTUS. Because I have a personal connection to Utah, I am semi-routing for it to be the one that forces the US Government to finally decide, once and for all, and becoming the new “Loving VS Virginia”.
i was just sayin. we’ll leave ruling on gut, not constitution, to scalia and thomas.
…that Gov. Corbett will not appeal this ruling on behalf of PA.