currently 35 states still specifically prohibit same-sex marriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States

A legal challenge to our anti-gay amendment was put on hold pending the SCOTUS ruling. Given the high court has OKed the lower courts ruling regarding California I can't Michigan's Republicans winning. Other states may also get ruled unconstitutional.

with the numbers, but they only indicate that the Supremes won't take on state bans in general until the balance has shifted much more substantially. They only indicated that right now the overwhelming majority of the states ban same-sex marriage.

At the time of Loving, the civil rights movement was extremely active, desegregation had already been through its nastiest resistance, and it was pretty much southern states that had so-called anti-miscegenation laws. It was time.

Right now, the overwhelming majority of the states do not recognize same-sex marriage, and the level of violence and repression generally directed against gays is nowhere near the level of what African Americans had suffered at the time of Loving. (Please understand that I am not in any way belittling the effects of violence and repression directed against gays in this country - it is very substantial and is not to tolerated. There just aren't routine lynch mobs running around just grabbing gay people and hanging them, keeping them away from the polls, etc. There aren't 'male, female, homosexual' separate-but-equal public accommodations and signs everywhere in the most bigoted areas declaring that businesses serve 'heterosexual only.')

It'll take at least a 50/50 balance before the Supreme Court will actually take on the issue.

Remember that the Windsor majority reasoning depended very heavily on respect for States' traditional and nearly exclusive rights to define marriage. It's a big step to do a u-turn on the same subject and turn the reasoning around entirely to support striking down state bans on same-sex marriage...

Oh - and finally, the real challenge is even bigger - there is basically no historical record of civilizations that enabled homosexuals to marry each other, while many civilizations, generally out of necessity concerning diverse ethnic makeup, had much marital mixing of persons of diverse ethnic backgrounds. I strongly believe that same-sex marriage is a good thing, and its time has come, but I do recognize that it is a genuinely radical step in redefining what the institution of marriage is.

Foremost fiction being "no historical record of civilizations that enabled homosexuals to marry each other".

Obviously, you have been living in a cave or off the internet for the last 15 or 20 years, because there's been TONS of discussion had and books written about societies that DID make accommodations for same-sex unions of some kind - and in many cases, same-sex unions were exalted ABOVE opposite sex relationships. See, for example, Ancient Greece, Sparta, pre-modern Japan.

Now let me first say, I'm not giving you grief for your post or it's content.

But I do chuckle, when I hear all the crying and whining and bawling and etc., over how the "institution" of marriage is
belittled and destroyed by LGBT folks getting "married".

Hell...those "institution" holders have done about everything they can to destroy "marriage"...divorce (over and over and over)
and abuse and child abandonment and...well, it goes on and on.

If I had my way, marriage would be for LIFE! Let's see all those whiners would deal with that!

p.s...this was actually in reply to RiverNoord (I was too lazy to delete and start over...sorry!

concerning how so many claim that the institution of marriage is somehow degraded by opening it up same-sex partners. There isn't any logic to it, and whenever I ask a hetero married person who has just expressed the view how exactly it degrades his/her marriage, there is no response other than an occasional 'it just does.'

On your other points - no argument here. I was a 'family law' attorney for two years, which was about a year longer than I could really endure it. Frankly, I do believe that marriage ought to be for life, in general (not perhaps the best perspective for a divorce lawyer - probably had something to do with my need to get out of the field before I went bonkers).

In the end, though - marriage is definitely an important institution in our society and always will be. Even though this is true, it's based generally on the extremely frequent occurrence of two relatively young people becoming very attracted to each other, which leads to a strong and temporary emotional/physiological/neurological change in the parties, as they fall in 'love' and decide that they want to spend their lives together. The temporary state eventually subsides, and hopefully the parties find that all of the potential problems that they couldn't or wouldn't see early are very real and must be approached. Some do very well, some don't. Divorce is there, more and more often in our society, for those who don't try very hard to work things through.

I've got a very nice cave with an excellent T1 connection. From this cave, I have certainly learned about a number of ancient Greek city-states that sanctioned and institutionalized, at various times, homosexual relationships. However, almost all of them were based on pedophilia, and relationships between two post-pubescent males were generally frowned upon. At least according to the limited sources we have available. How do you suppose this would play in a court of law considering the historical precedents for same-sex marriage?

There are also some interesting records concerning the early Christian church, describing sanctioned same-sex unions, primarily between clergy. Of course, the primary inheritor of this tradition is the Catholic church, which almost certainly has, for a period of time perhaps most properly described as centuries, been the single most active organization in the world behind the sexual molestation of minor boys. So... records are there, but not particularly helpful.

A number of Native American tribes, I understand, did practice some degree of same-sex union, but, as I understand it, such unions were almost always based on one partner being a highly effeminate male, and this effeminate male assumed the role of 'wife' in the relationship.

There are other records also, you are right. What I stated about there being no historical record that enabled homosexuals to marry each other is wrong, and I apologize for the error. However, the practices were almost universally abandoned and generally condemned after a few centuries in most civilizations where they were, for a time, present. Not really the best precedent, again, for a court of law considering the specific question of declaring states' bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional throughout the United States.

I really would rather not respond to garbage like that, but, well hell, a guy's gotta say something in the face of a completely misguided insult like that.

I was born and raised in North Dakota - I eventually recognized that I was very liberal, which wasn't easy in the environment I grew up in. I then recognized that I was an atheist, and have also been a vegetarian (not quite vegan) for over 20 years. I have been pro-gay marriage for many years, and am very pleased with the Supreme Court's recent decision concerning Section 3 of what was rather pathetically named the "Defense of Marriage Act".

I am also a lawyer, and I responded to a post suggesting that state same-sex marriage bans were on the path to being ruled unconstitutional fairly soon and in a manner similar to Loving v. Virginia. I indicated my doubts about this being likely anytime soon, since the reasoning of Justice Kennedy's majority opinion striking down DOMA section 3 relied very, very heavily on the historical avoidance of marriage regulation by the federal government as well at the states' constitutional rights to define what rules apply to marriage within their jurisdictions. The reasoning is problematic for potential future consideration of state same-sex marriage bans, precisely because it would almost seem to bar rulings just like Loving.

Apparently you decided to respond to my assertion, faulty as it was, that there were no records of major civilizations incorporating same-sex marriage into their cultures. I should have limited the statement to perhaps the last 1500 years. However, all I did was take a couple of your examples - ancient Greece and some Native American tribes - and point out that same-sex unions, especially in ancient Greece, where they were mostly limited in time and between adult and prepubescent males, weren't the kind of marriages that we would consider appropriate today - in particular, the whole concept of two adults declaring publicly and with legal consequence their intention to spend their lives as spouses.

That's reality - what is happening today with the elevation of same-sex marriage is truly radical in human history, and it is a remarkably good thing, demonstrating that, at least in some ways, the human species is making real progress with respect to the advancement of rights for a historically highly persecuted group of people who are present in every society - not an ethnic group, but people defined simply by their sexual attraction to members of their own gender.

I don't know how this comes out as 'medieval', but, hey, whatever you need to make yourself feel absolutely right, go ahead - I won't bother to respond after this.

it's a good thing for NV., now we can move forward and get this unconstitutional amendment overturned and allow gay marriage to be recognized in NV.