Wertfrei Wednesday: Equality in Marriage
The recent ruling, as related by Mark Joseph Stern:
In his opinion striking down Pennsylvania’s gay marriage ban, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III may have just taken the cake. Jones, a Republican endorsed by Rick Santorum, walks us lucidly through the granular legal details of equal protection and due process. It’s an impressive analysis, thorough and thoughtful—but the real gut-punch comes in Jones’ peroration, as the judge places his ruling in the broader historical context of civil rights in America:
The issue we resolve today is a divisive one. Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional. Nor can past tradition trump the bedrock constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Were that not so, our would still be a racially segregated nation according to the now rightfully discarded doctrine of “separate but equal.” … In the sixty years since Brown [v. Board of Education] was decided, “separate” has thankfully faded into history, and only “equal” remains. Similarly, in future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by marriage.
One by one, the States of America are coming to their senses by approving marriage for everyone, not just those in the mainstream, but all Adult Citizens. There was a time, still existing in some American cultures, that merely walking hand in hand with your loved one could/can get you beat up-even killed.
