My GLBT friends, why aren't there MORE lawsuits?

I mean, obviously, DOMA and DADT are civil rights violations and therefore unConstitutional.

Now, I know that at one time the SCOTUS was stacked against you and they may even seem that way, now.

But, there is a big difference now. The Administration is required to defend the government's position.

In the past, the Administration would fight tooth and nail to deny you civil rights.

Now, the Administration is still required to fight, but they "want" to lose.

It would be nice if Congress could fix this problem on it's own, but there are too many homophobic Republicans that will fight at every chance we give them.

BUT, if SCOTUS declares it unConstitutional, that's a whole different game. I know that it's still a Conservative SCOTUS, but we have an administration that is willing to LOSE ON PURPOSE. So that the right judgment may prevail.

SUE your local government. Force them to escalate it until it gets to the SCOTUS. Then maybe we can work seriously on having real equality in this Country.

One the SCOTUS is a problem. Two there actually have been a fairly decent number of suits that have moved fairly fast. Both the California and Massachusetts cases have been filed since Obama won. DADT is being challenged by a lawsuit as we type. Every victory we have had on marriage equality has come from lawsuits except for Vermont where we had sued before to get Civil Unions. I know that in NC we made a deal. We won't sue and the lege won't let a Constitutional amendment banning marriage on the ballot.

rest of the world.:mad: :eyes: :smoke:

In Washington State, there has been a constant movement towards marriage equality without the courts being involved. Even at the ballot box, the citizens of that great state (where I used to live, sigh!) have steadily approved what they have been offered towards recognizing all couples as being entitled to the same rights.

Too damn bad that here in NY, we have so many nominal Catholics that buy their bishops' BS on the subject of marriage equality.

we got civil unions in Jersey, California, and Washington State at least without suing.

and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results. The current status of the law there is that everything but the title of "marriage" is what same-gender couples get, and that's only because it was not offered to people in the voting booth.

I'm proud to be from a place where the people are smarter than the courts that turned down equal marriage when the state Supreme Court had a chance to do the right thing. It makes things damned tough for the reich wing to argue with a vote of the people, when they have their heads out of their arses.

Edited to add:

I remember when discrimination against gay/lesbian people was on the ballot back in the 1980's, and they tried that crap in Seattle. It was defeated, and I recall the people in the streets chanting, "Two, four, six, eight, Seattle stopped the wave of hate!"

It's not just in the big cities that the folks in Washington see the way the future is going to look.

For marriage, only then was it legislative. WA unlike most states does not have a public initiative process to ammend the constitution - si the courts were the best hope until a few years ago.

But every time the issue has been in front of the people, they've done the right thing. You can't say that in any other state.

There's no need to amend a state constitution to permit equal marriage, they only use constitutional amendments to prevent people from getting their rights from a court. Washington started out in 2007 with a limited domestic partnership law, that did not see any successful effort arise to even get on the ballot to repeal it from the fundies.

Only two years later, the Legislature sought to expand the rights to everything encompassed by marriage, except the name. This time, equality opponents were able to gather enough signatures to prevent the law from taking effect until after the voters had a say. Well, they had their say, loud and clear, with 53% of the voters backing equality in the form that it was offered to them.

I'm confident that in the near future, full equal marriage will be coming to WA. In other states, those who would call themselves progressives can always fall back on the "Well, the people don't want it," argument as a way to avoid dealing with equality, Washington voters have taken that 'reasoning' away from their legislature.

As for the case that the WA Supreme Court turned back equality, that was by only one vote. With a change in Court membership (they, too are elected by voters, and an actively pro-equality candidate might emerge) along with the legislative and referendum victories, you might just see a future WA Supreme Court simply declare that the law passed by a majority of voters IS marriage, and should be called that, accordingly.

Tell me of any place else in the US that has made this much progress on marriage equality, when it comes to the will of the people, rather than of the courts or the legislatures.

In a "perfect world", whichever side makes the best argument should win. Well, then again, maybe that's not so "perfect". Because no matter how well any petitioner makes their argument, the Judge will find some way to further their persoanl prejudices.

Although, I think that now we have the best chance to make it difficult for any judge to justify their prejudice against such an obvious civil rights violation. However, they have done it before.

I still can't help but feel that the best chance is through the courts. Congress can pass as many laws they want, but if they are ruled unConstitutional (as DOMA, DADT, etc clearly are) it doesn't matter what laws they pass or how they are worded or who is President.

But, it still depends on how homophobic the SCOTUS is. I still hold out hope that we can destroy all anti-arguments so that at least 1 conservative judge would be forced to consider his position in favor of real Civil rights. We only need one. But that may be all it takes. But I still can't but feel in my heart that it's our best chance to protect Civil rights for all.

We have to find the right cases to set good precedent on legal issues. If we could get the Supreme Court to (finally) let gays into the suspect class category, even if it's not on a marriage-related issue, that would come close to sealing the deal on future marriage-equality cases. However, if we push too far, too fast, and with the wrong court (this applies just as much at the federal appellate level as it does on the Supreme Court level), we'll end up with terrible, anti-gay precedent that is difficult to overturn because you have to get a court essentially to admit that it was wrong before. Case in point: Bowers v. Hardwick set terrible, hostile anti-gay precedent in 1986 and wasn't overturned until 2003 with Lawrence v. Texas, and even that is close to judicial warp speed, and Sandra Day O'Connor still couldn't admit that she was wrong with Bowers (had to come up with a transparent equal protection concurrence to make it look like she wasn't wrong before, just that they decided that prior case under a different legal framework).

Anyway, my response has been long and rambly. Bottom line is that going too fast can do a lot more damage than being patient for a few more years and getting better precedent set for generations. This is why I'm terribly worried about the marriage equality/Prop 8 case in CA that Ted Olson, among others, is filing. If this gets to the Supreme Court, which it probably will, I have a hard time seeing 5 justices siding with marriage equality, and then we'll end up with terrible precedent that binds all of the lower courts. Sigh. It's a lose-lose really.

It costs between 100k and 200k and sometimes much more to take a case to the SC. Also the court only takes maybe 1 out of every 200 cases that are presented to it. I think working at the local level is best for most people with national organizations handling major lawsuits.