From SCOTUS Blog: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/12/commentary-on-marriage-grants-marriage-equalitys-cinderella-moment/
William Eskridge and Hans Johnson
Sun, December 9th, 2012
The blog is pleased to have commentary and analysis of Friday’s grants in the marriage cases from supporters of both sides. This post has reactions from William N. Eskridge Jr., Professor of Law at Yale, and Hans P. Johnson, President of Progressive Victory.
For almost two generations, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons have demanded equal treatment from the state for their committed relationships. For most of that period, American government has denied such claims, and leading politicians have disparaged them. In 1996, for example, Congress and President Clinton enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the most sweeping governmental discrimination against gay people in American history. When state judges have recognized marriage equality under state constitutions, there has been a much-noted backlash against such rulings. One example was California’s Proposition 8, which in 2008 overrode marriage equality through a voter initiative amending the state constitution.
In the last month, marriage equality for LGBT persons has emerged as the Cinderella of American public law. Once dressed in rags and consigned to the shadows, marriage equality now dances in the ballroom, pursued by suitors who once spurned it without remorse. The Clinton and Bush presidencies exploited gay marriage in their politics of scapegoating – yet President Obama just won reelection as a supporter of marriage equality. In an increasing number of cases, federal and state judges, including several Republican judges, have ruled that DOMA’s central provision and discriminatory state marriage laws violate constitutional equality guarantees.
On December 7, the Supreme Court took review in one of the DOMA cases (United States v. Windsor) and in the case challenging Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry). The very institution that ruled in 1967 that “homosexuals” were, as a matter of law, “persons afflicted with psychopathic personality” could by June 2013 restore marriage equality in the nation’s largest state and could strike down the DOMA provision barring federal rights and benefits for lesbian and gay couples validly married under state law.
How did we get to this Cinderella moment? What role did courts play? And what role should the U.S. Supreme Court play in the endgame?
The nation has arrived at this moment for marriage equality, essentially, because lesbian and gay couples came out of their closets. Once Americans got to know something about LGBT people and their relationships, the overwhelming anti-gay attitudes of thirty years ago have steadily eroded. When we were growing up, in the small-town South and Midwest, almost everyone said that “homosexuals” were mentally ill and dangerous predators. Indeed, the central anti-gay stereotype was (and remains) the idea that “homosexuality” is anti-family. This is the conceptual basis for the Clinton/Bush-era idea that marriage and family need “defending” against LGBT persons.
Continue reading at: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/12/commentary-on-marriage-grants-marriage-equalitys-cinderella-moment/
