Way to be wishy-washy

This effort to nationalize equality of the sexes began almost century ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment




Still hasn't taken hold....

Maybe time for a new and broader push...? Perhaps a rising tide might lift all boats?

right-wing legislation by the gazillion, would ever deny anyone rights that should be protected by Federal law, if not our Constitution. Yeah, they would never do that. Fuck the gerrymandered right-wing red states, their legislatures, and the horses they rode in on.

If the SCOTUS respects States' Rights on this issue, then gay marriage will eventually spread to all the states worth living in. An imperfect victory, perhaps. Unless you're really confident that this SCOTUS will put equality above their personal views, which I just don't know.

If "evolving standards of morality" are what SCOTUS looks at, you need to put the onus for evolution on the states. That's what a states' rights view gets you. For now.

Then, once a majority of states (or of states' population) are behind it, it's the dominant morality. It's easy to standardize that across the country.

10 years ago it looked like any change would have to be centrally driven. That was where the push was, on principle. Now it looks like it's going to be driven at the state level first. So that's where the push is ... equally on principle.

for equality. This is about average folks recognizing right from wrong. And it goes beyond moral fairness because tax benefits and legal rights are attached to marriage. I believe that this is readily apparent to most people.

Still President Obama 1.0?

In order for anything to change that law, cases must proceed to the Supreme Court, right?

What powers does a President have over that situation itself? He can't repeal a law, so what am I missing here?

If cases against DOMA are going to go to SCOTUS, don't they individually have to come from individual states?

If that kind of work against DOMA goes on at the state level in order to proceed to SCOTUS and overturn DOMA, why not ALSO use those efforts to do an end run around whatever happens at SCOTUS, by also using that same legal effort to address LGBTQ Civil Rights to marriage at state levels too?

One of the things that makes me think about this is, even though I'm not Gay, I am concerned about how my particularly red state will do whatever it wants anyway, despite or in reaction to whatever SCOTUS does about DOMA, so even though other states will not impede LGBTQ rights to marry, MY state (and others like it) will fuck it up however they get a chance to, so LGBTQ will leave my state and those LGBT who do stay here will not have their right to marry. We will be abandoned, LGBTQ will not really have their rights here no matter what SCOTUS says (and if you think that's not true, you should check into how red states have very effectively impeded the rights defined in Roe v. Wade).

Since LGBT have a right to marry, should that not be a right EVERYWHERE and if that cannot be established by SCOTUS alone, wouldn't it also be a good thing to see that legal effort go on in EVERY state? This would bring it closer to being an actual right and not just a de facto privilege in some states and not others.

So, I guess you could say that I am for doing both. Challenges to DOMA are underway and individual states could benefit from that effort by collaborating from the "states' rights" perspective.

That is okey-dokey by him.

DOMA is going to SCOTUS and that will mean something about the whole country. None of which he can fully predict yet, so he's covering the contingencies. Whatever we end up with it's going to be some proportion of federal:state and our history on Civil Rights in that regard is that violations receive the kind of federal resources that resulted from Brown v. Board of Ed. (in Topeka, Kansas). Remember the Norman Rockwell's painting of Ruby Bridges and the federal marshalls? I wonder if something like that is not being defined by this whole federal:state legal dance.

Obama still wouldn't be able to use the bathrooms in Mississippi.