Early on, I made the 'incrementalist' error, by suggesting that civil unions was a step forward. I'm glad the true activists brushed that nonsense aside and demanded full-on marriage. I wonder if we could have had single payer within a decade if we'd kept demanding it, and not simply gotten behind subsidies for private for-profit insurance.

My reasons would have been slightly different.

I know the legal system. There is no way that civil unions would ever achieve the status of marriage, just because it would require the cooperation of every state & country to create civil unions - and then to litigate their portability from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I've slogged through all the property, estate, family law cases creating that portability for marriages. It would all have had to be repeated for civil unions.

I have friends who were incredibly frustrated after Windsor when their civil unions were not recognized as marriages. I don't think I actually said, "I told you so." But I did try hard to warn them up front that **even** getting married (as we did) in a jurisdiction which permitted it is an incredible legal risk/unknown. Entering into a civil union, with the expectation that it would be given similar recognition to marriages, was the height of legal folly. (There are valid reasons for entering into a civil union - it is the expectation that they would (in my lifetime) be granted reciprocity under marriage laws that is legal folly.) My friends are now having to go through the expense and bother of dissolving their second or third civil union, in order to actually be married, now that it is legal everywhere in the US.

I don't think that would work with single payer. The key here is that the right to marry the person you choose to marry has been recognized as a constitutional right, in one form or another, for decades. That allowed the courts to force recognition of marriages state by state long before people (or legislatures) in those states would have been willing to do so voluntarily And, in this case at least, familiarity breeds acceptance. There isn't any equivalent constitutional hook to permit courts to force single payer on a group in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. So whether incremental steps work depends on the circumstances of the legal situation.

on straight people. The Vermont civil union law helped pave the way for the Massachusetts marriage law because it got straight people to understand how important partnerships/spouses are for everyone, and also got them to see that the world didn't fall apart when civil unions were recognized. I think civil unions really were a helpful step toward marriage -- for helping to change the minds of straight people.

I'm not saying that civil unions would have ever been enough as the ultimate goal -- but I think they helped move the country down the path to full marriage equality.

Within 10 years does not mean exactly 10 years. It means less than 10 years.

You nailed it, with room to spare.

Nice job.

I didn't start seeing the inevitability of nationwide marriage equality until the military began to recognize same-sex marriages. Also, when the federal courts started telling states that their laws were discriminatory, and the SCOTUS didn't interfere, I knew it was just a matter of time.

I was surprised even today by how unequivocal the ruling was. I expected a ruling that told all states to recognise marriages performed in other states, but left legal room for places in the Deep South who might never have had marriage equality. In other words, I thought that GLBT people here in Mississippi would have had to go elsewhere to get legally married. The SCOTUS said 'Fuck all of that' today, and I'm so proud.

I haven't read the decision yet - but I've read many of the lower court cases and the briefs. As someone who has drafted judicial opinions, including ones addressing constitutional questions, at Federal District Court & state appellate court level, I thought the due process and equal protection arguments were too much of a stretch under the law as it stood before today's decision.

A decision affirming the first question & reversing the second question would have had the impact of making same gender marriage legal everywhere - without bringing the constitution into it so directly. (States have to respect each other's orders, but aren't constitutional mandated to permit marriage directly.)

Wrong on that too. Never been so glad to be wrong in my life!

and the subsidies for the ACA. Not that the issues were related; it was just hard to imagine this Court making two blockbuster "liberal" decisions in the same week.

So when they didn't overturn the ACA, I braced myself for the worst.

I'm still stunned.

But in my experience at the appellate court level, that kind of horse-trading doesn't go on between cases. (There is jockeying about wording in order to get votes - but in my experience it doesn't extend to trading one case for another.)

Cannot believe it happened.

Despite my prediction in 2008, the writing was on the wall after Windsor. Although I thought today's decision would only go halfway (forcing states to recognize marriages from other states), it would be challenging to have issued Windsor and not have reversed the second question.

I think you were prescient.

I work in the law & have been experiencing first hand for nearly 34 years the change in attitudes which comes with people realizing that someone they know and love is gay. Once marriages started being allowed (and people discovered their neighbors were gay), change was inevitable - and a Loving-type decision was the easiest way to get there in the parts of the country where their gay neighbors were still closeted.

Things just moved much more quickly than I expected. If I searched for them, I could also find posts I made slamming the Prop 8 case as being too early. My assessment at the time, was that they were bringing the case a couple of years too early - it would lose at the Supreme Court and make bad law we would have to live with for decades. I have lived with the emotional consequences for 17 years of creating bad law at the appellate level in our state, and denying families in counties which might have quietly approved it the right to create a legal link between both same gender parents and their children. I was convinced to bring that case too early because of things going on in our lives which made it important for my spouse to be legally related to our daughter. The Prop 8 case felt very much the same. And then Windsor came along, with her perfect case and everything changed.

And now - I spent the morning before heading into work - gathering the necessary documents to file for the adoption of an adult child (she is now 25). As soon as we get the paperwork together, we'll have a big party - at least invite the Lambda attorney who represented us (who is now a judge), our local counsel at the time, as well as friends, family, and faith community who supported the initial attempt at adoption nearly 2 decades ago. Somehow I'm going to work that case in to our advantage. We have to present evidence of a parental relationship established when our daughter was a minor. Somehow I think the decision denying the adoption establishes that we did everything we could to do just that!

I thank you for your fighting in the trenches.

Today is something I thought I would never see.

The best of luck to you and your daughter!

We spent the morning, before I went to work, figuring out what we needed to do to accomplish the adoption that was denied 17 years ago and gathering all the documents.

Our attorney from back then is on board to make a guest appearance. Our neighbor will write another letter, as will our faith community. Our neighbor hates for anyone to see her writing, because she doesn't have much formal education. But she hates more that my spouse could never be related to our daughter. The court is just waiting for us to walk in (numerous conversations today). If I can find papers we need, it may happen next week. If not - it will likely be the week of the 13th. It will be a chance for a big court party - who knows, maybe we'll invite local media if there is still interest by then.

Someone tried to tell me that magic doesn't exist. I told her this was the wrong day to try to convince me of that!

ETA: On a quick search for amicus briefs, ours does not appear to be mentioned. They stuck with mostly legal/mental health/historical briefs. The only faith based on I see on a quick glance is the Seventh Day Adventists brief - cited by the dissent.

the momentum built rapidly, and now it is the law everywhere.

It has always been unconstitutional, this denial of rights by the state.

The justice system is slow. Too slow, but it works.

Something along the lines that it is unconstitutional - whether or not the court has said it yet.

I've just been tracking my prediction specifically - popping it up frequently enough that I can find it - ever since I was bold enough to say it out loud. Didn't track all the other stuff I said about it.

we need more liberal justices, and more dems in office to vote for them. I was pleasantly surprised as well. I didn't expect change to come this fast. The pent up demand for weddings will boost our nation's economy.

I point to people like Kennedy.

It happens more often than people realize (based on the surprise when it happens) that, absent the threat that they will lose the next election if they decide the wrong way. judges/justices really mature into their roles in a way that is good for the country

I just wanted to throw in there if i missed its mention that the writing on the wall became more clear as 20 other countries had already legalized gay marriage. Even the bigots on the Supreme Court and Congress saw that it was inevitable if America was going to keep up and it was just a matter of how long they would hold out.

I really expected them to leave the ultimate decision to the states (by affirming the first question), but create equality via a Loving/Windsor type decision - which forced recognition of marriages created in other states.

That would be inconvenient for a while, but effectively create marriage in all 50 states, since you could just travel to another state to marry.

name judges to SCOTUS. This week has assured me of that opinion.

In 2008, I would've been one of those people saying you were too optimistic.

So, whom do you like in the fifth at Aqueduct?