{"id":7871,"date":"2006-07-07T09:40:41","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T13:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7871.html"},"modified":"2006-07-07T09:40:41","modified_gmt":"2006-07-07T13:40:41","slug":"courts-in-new-york-georgia-block-gay-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/courts-in-new-york-georgia-block-gay-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Courts in New York, Georgia block gay marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t expect much progress in [tag]Georgia[\/tag]<\/a>, but yesterday’s ruling on [tag]gay marriage[\/tag] from New York’s highest court<\/a> was disappointing.<\/p>\n

When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in November 2003, gay rights advocates imagined a chain reaction that would shake marriage laws until same-sex couples across the nation had the legal right to wed.<\/p>\n

Nowhere did gay marriage seem like a natural fit more than New York, where the Stonewall uprising of 1969 provided inspiration for the gay rights movement and where a history of spirited progressivism had led some gay couples to envision their own weddings someday.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then \u2014 it came as a shocking insult to gay rights groups. Leaders said they were stunned by both the rejection and the decision’s language, which they saw as expressing more concern for the children of heterosexual couples than for the children of gay couples. They also took exception to the ruling’s description of homosexuality as a preference rather than an orientation.<\/p>\n

“I never would have dreamed that New York’s highest court would be so callous and insulting to gay people — not in [tag]New York[\/tag] — to have a legal decision that treats us as if we are alien beings,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The court’s ruling argued that [tag]children[\/tag] are better off<\/a> being raised by a biological mother and father, rather than by a gay or lesbian [tag]couple[\/tag]. As evidence, the court cited … nothing in particular. And the court overlooked contrary conclusions<\/a> from the American Psychological Association, which recently reported that there is literally no evidence that children of gay or lesbian parents are “disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents,” because … well, the court didn’t say why.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the ruling insisted that changes in this area of the law should come from the legislature, not the courts. That’s a compelling argument, but what happens when elected officials fail to offer equality under the law? Citizens turn to the courts for justice. Unfortunately, people in New York and Georgia didn’t get any yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t expect much progress in [tag]Georgia[\/tag], but yesterday’s ruling on [tag]gay marriage[\/tag] from New York’s highest court was disappointing. When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in November 2003, gay rights advocates imagined a chain reaction that would shake marriage laws until same-sex couples across the nation had the legal right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}