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Warning. This article on gay marriage contains optimism
Remember that Alito said that same sex marriage is "newer than cellphones or the Internet", no doubt as part of his excuse for why he'll rule against it? It turns out that it has a history in US legal argument of over 40 years:
When Michael Wetherbee, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, rose to argue in favour of gay marriage before the Minnesota supreme court in 1971, one of the judges turned his chair round and refused to look at him. The petition was summarily dismissed. "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman ... is as old as the book of Genesis," the ruling stated.
A year later, Madeline Davis, 72, rose before the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach and argued for legal protections for gay equality. She described the decision by the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier – a gay liberation organisation of which Davis was a founding member – to run a delegate for the convention as "an act of bravery and outrageousness".
She was followed by an Ohio delegate, with leadership support, who drew parallels between homosexuality, paedophilia and prostitution. Davis's proposal was defeated on a voice vote. "We knew we were at the beginning of something and had a huge task ahead of us," she says. "Back then we were trying to stop people from being kicked out of their jobs and harassed on the street. We knew we couldn't stop at the convention. We dedicated our lives to moving this along."
Recently it has moved some unlikely people in unlikely places an unbelievable distance. Last week, Illinois senator Mark Kirk became the latest high-profile Republican to come out in favour of gay marriage, shortly after Ohio senator Rob Portman. As recently as 2010, Kirk was against it. On Tuesday he said: "Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back. Government has no place in the middle." A week earlier, two separate cases regarding gay marriage came before the US supreme court. Anthony Kennedy, who usually provides the swing vote in the court, appeared mostly sympathetic to marriage equality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/07/gay-marriage-optimism-activists
A year later, Madeline Davis, 72, rose before the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach and argued for legal protections for gay equality. She described the decision by the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier – a gay liberation organisation of which Davis was a founding member – to run a delegate for the convention as "an act of bravery and outrageousness".
She was followed by an Ohio delegate, with leadership support, who drew parallels between homosexuality, paedophilia and prostitution. Davis's proposal was defeated on a voice vote. "We knew we were at the beginning of something and had a huge task ahead of us," she says. "Back then we were trying to stop people from being kicked out of their jobs and harassed on the street. We knew we couldn't stop at the convention. We dedicated our lives to moving this along."
Recently it has moved some unlikely people in unlikely places an unbelievable distance. Last week, Illinois senator Mark Kirk became the latest high-profile Republican to come out in favour of gay marriage, shortly after Ohio senator Rob Portman. As recently as 2010, Kirk was against it. On Tuesday he said: "Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back. Government has no place in the middle." A week earlier, two separate cases regarding gay marriage came before the US supreme court. Anthony Kennedy, who usually provides the swing vote in the court, appeared mostly sympathetic to marriage equality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/07/gay-marriage-optimism-activists
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