{"id":855,"date":"2003-11-18T11:22:57","date_gmt":"2003-11-18T16:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/855.html"},"modified":"2003-11-18T11:22:57","modified_gmt":"2003-11-18T16:22:57","slug":"massachusetts-high-court-clears-way-for-gay-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/massachusetts-high-court-clears-way-for-gay-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts high court clears way for gay marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a decision that will likely reverberate in legal and political circles for a long time, Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court ruled this morning that the state cannot deny gays and lesbians the right to marry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 4-3 ruling said the state “failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.”<\/p>\n

The court did not immediately allow marriage licenses to be issued to the gay couples who filed the lawsuit, and instead ordered the state legislature 180 days to find a solution. This follows a similar path to Vermont, which created its civil unions law after being ordered to do so by a state court.<\/p>\n

As a matter of principle, respect, and compassion, this is an excellent ruling and a landmark day for civil rights. As far as I’m concerned, this is a no-brainer. I’ve never really understood the rationale opposing gay marriage in the first place.<\/p>\n

As a matter of politics, however, we’re in a for a bumpy ride. Gay marriage has reached the level of reproductive choice in the culture war and today’s court ruling will fuel the fire. Expect the nation’s loudest conservatives to make a series of immediate demands, including a constitutional amendment, impeachment of judges, etc.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, today is a good day. For more background on the case, be sure to check this excellent Boston Globe summary<\/a>, which I found via the fine folks at naw<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a decision that will likely reverberate in legal and political circles for a long time, Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court ruled this morning that the state cannot deny gays and lesbians the right to marry. The 4-3 ruling said the state “failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}