Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
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| Sun, 05-16-2004 - 12:31pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Gay%20Marriage%20New%20Era
Sunday, May 16, 2004 · Last updated 6:34 a.m. PT
Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
By DAVID CRARY
AP NATIONAL WRITER
For better or for worse, depending on which side of the ideological aisle one chooses, a divided America crosses a historic threshold Monday as state-approved marriages of same-sex couples take place for the first time.
Promised a waiver of the normal three-day waiting period, the seven gay and lesbian couples who successfully sued for marriage rights in Massachusetts will wed before relatives, friends and supporters in Boston and three other towns. The United States will become just the fourth country in the world where same-sex couples can tie the knot.
The couples' jubilation will be shared by gay-rights advocates across the country, including many in states such as New York, California, Washington and New Jersey where comparable lawsuits are moving forward.
"This isn't just one historic moment in Massachusetts," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal. "It's the start of what will be a long period of progress and breakthroughs, with gay couples in other states also winning the right to marry."
For foes of gay marriage, Monday's weddings represent a stinging defeat - but one they hope will be reversed by a backlash among politicians and voters nationwide.
"What I'm starting to see is people who are apolitical, who never got involved before, saying, 'This is too much - we don't want same-sex marriage foisted on us,'" said Mathew Staver, president of a Florida-based legal group, Liberty Counsel, that is opposing gay marriage in numerous court cases.
Both sides in the debate expect the issue to figure prominently in the November election, with Massachusetts serving as a rallying cry and alarm bell.
Candidates for Congress will face pressure to explain their position on a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. Voters in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri and Utah - and probably several other states - will consider similar amendments to their state constitutions.
"It will be a national referendum about gays and gay marriage," said Rod McKenzie of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We're the underdog when it comes to all these ballot measures - the scale is bigger than we've ever had to deal with."
In states with the ballot measures, divisive campaigns already are underway.
An Oklahoma gay-rights group, for example, took out newspaper ads last week showing an outline of the state with "Closed" stamped over it. The ad contended that businesses would leave - or stay away - if voters approved the constitutional ban on gay marriage.
State Sen. James Williamson, a Republican from Tulsa, called the ad outrageous and predicted that a ban would attract new businesses.
"There is a real hunger for a return to traditional values and for leaders who will draw a line in the sand to help stop the moral decay of this country," he said.
Nationwide, both sides are planning marches and rallies over the coming week - among them, pro-gay marriage events in Iowa City, Iowa, and Las Cruces, N.M., and a "Not on My Watch" rally in Arlington, Texas, for pastors opposed to gay marriage.
Also following the Massachusetts events with interest will be the thousands of gay couples who married in recent months with the encouragement of local officials in San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and a handful of other municipalities.
Those marriages are clouded by varying degrees of legal uncertainty, and even in Massachusetts there is a possibility that voters in 2006 could jeopardize the impending marriages by approving a constitutional ban.
Katie Potter, a Portland policewoman who married partner Pam Moen in March, said she was delighted by the Massachusetts developments yet worried that it could take years for marriage rights to extend nationally.
"It's important for my two children to be able to say, 'My parents are married,'" Potter said.
Anti-gay marriage activists have no sympathy for such arguments.
"If we move down the road to legalizing marriage for unnatural homosexual couples, it will lead to an explosion of intentionally motherless or fatherless households," said Dave Smith of the Indiana Family Institute. "That is a radical social experiment that will place children in harm's way."
Though opinion polls show that most Americans oppose gay marriage, the rate of acceptance is much higher among people under 30 - for the younger generation, polls show a roughly even split on the issue.
"There's an absolute inevitability there," said Lambda Legal's Cathcart. "There's no reason to think the next generation of young people will go backward."
Mathew Staver, referring to the same demographic trends, said the next 18 months would be critical for gay-marriage foes.
"The window is now to pursue a federal marriage amendment that would put a halt to this nonsensical patchwork of litigation," said the Liberty Counsel attorney.
Even if many Americans wish otherwise, Massachusetts, as of Monday, will join the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada's three most populous provinces as the only places worldwide where gays can marry, though the rest of Canada expected to follow soon.
In the Netherlands, which pioneered gay marriage three years ago, the practice now stirs little controversy. Cheryl Jacques, a former Massachusetts legislator who now heads the Human Rights Campaign, a major gay-rights group, hopes her compatriots eventually emulate the Dutch.
"For the vast majority of Americans, Monday will be a completely ordinary day - nothing's going to change," she said. "But for some Americans in Massachusetts - gay and lesbian families - it will be a truly historic day, when their families will be made stronger and their children will become safer."
"I'm very proud of my state," Jacques added. "Massachusetts is going to teach the rest of the country a lesson - equality doesn't hurt anyone."
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Lambda Legal: http://www.lambdalegal.org/
Liberty Counsel: http://www.lc.org/
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Children can't say the Pledge of Allegiance in school anymore,
Where?
>Where? I heard it said at a public high school in February
The reference was to the 9th Circuit's decision to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. They imposed a 90 day stay. You would have seen the pledge in your local school if you aren't in their sphere of influence.
>equal representation that there is a problem.
Doesn't exist, isn't guranteed.
I agree with not allowing corporal punishment from teachers but the reference was to a time period when a teacher could be trusted to use good judgement with regards to the punishment. I do however, agree with corporal punishment for your own children but if you don't I respect that as well.
I can't believe your children call their teachers by their first name. That is certainly disrepectable.
Jim
I have no idea why anyone would be against other peoples human rights to enjoy life. Although I am married, I have nothing against anyone same sex or not that wish to share a life together and be recognized as a union like heterosexual couples.
Doogie
The homosexual movement is so militant it is all or nothing.
You have seen no one here post anything trying to infringe on a person's right to enjoy life more simply we are defending marriage and its traditional definition.
Jim
Like I said earlier. You pick a point, state your case and if I disagree I'll prove you wrong. Not with opinion but with fact. I'll save the time from posting my links as I'm sure you wouldn't bother reading them.
Its not a cop out its just unrealistic. I'll stand here and defend my beliefs I just won't try to refute 100s of pages of dogma.
Jim
Please show government documentation to prove any of this paragraph and I will read it all.
http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/rulings.html
http://www.retakingamerica.com/great_america_decl_inde_01.html
http://www.noapathy.org/tracts/mythofseparation.html
In the 1892 Supreme Court ruling in Church of the Holy Trinity vs. U.S. (citing 87 precedents), "Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian."
George Washington
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without
God and the Bible.
Thomas Jefferson
"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice."
John Adams
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people...so great is my veneration of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens in their country and respectful members of society."
The Declaration of Independence
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
I can go on...
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