A (Partial) History of Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage. Nothing new.

Same-sex couples may now marry in all fifty states, and people are beginning work on histories of the marriage-equality movement.[1] I hope that these histories go back far enough. There is a stark difference between this history of same-sex marriage and the history of same-sex marriage in the United States.

When I was listening the Obergefell hearing, I was not particularly surprised that several justices brought up the question of whether there were historical examples of same-sex marriage. I actually think this line of questioning was profoundly irrelevant. We can find plenty of historical examples, and even contemporary ones, for things that are prohibited by the constitution. I don’t need to go deep into history to find examples of the suppression of freedom of speech. Just as a lack of freedom of speech in other places and times says nothing of our rights, a lack (or even existence) of same-sex marriage in history would say nothing about whether or not it was part of basic human liberty.

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Marriage Equality — At Last!

Let freedom ring!

I’ve been waiting a long time for this! I’ve been arguing in favor of same-sex marriage for more than twenty years. When California authorized domestic partnerships, I saw them as half a loaf (or maybe even less, given the limited rights initially granted, though even this was better than the almost completely symbolic domestic partnerships that the city of Laguna Beach offered in the early 90s).

Opposition to marriage equality came from not only those who sought to roll back gay rights, but also from those who, though in favor of gay rights, were either opposed to marriage itself, or felt that the gay community should be pursuing other goals. If you had asked me in 1995 if employment protections or marriage equality were more achievable, I would have said, “no doubt about it, employment.” I’ve seen arguments that we should have gone for ENDA. Employment protections are important, but during the same time that Obergefell moved through the courts, the Republicans have been in control of Congress. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act has no chance of budging in a Republican-controlled Congress. In other words, if all our efforts for marriage equality in the last five years had been applied to employment non-discrimination for LGBT people, we’d be in the same place on employment, and still not have marriage equality.

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What Does a Ketubah Mean to a Catholic?

Not a ketubah, alas.

The New York Times has an article about a lesbian couple in Boston who are surprised that they were turned down by a rabbi when they sought to marry. The couple, Julia Spiegelman and Erina Donnelly seem to be the last people to find out that many rabbis won’t perform interfaith ceremonies.

For those of you who are late to this party, the Reconstructionist movement was the first to call for equal treatment and the full integration of gay people into synagogue life. That mean, even if without a marriage license, celebrating same-sex unions. They were followed in this by the Reform movement and finally the Conservative movement. So, about 90 percent of American Jews belong to movements that permit same-sex weddings.

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Can You Name these Legitimate Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage?

Legitimate matching rings.

Over at The Dish, Andrew Sullivan has a post titled “There Are Legitimate Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage,” although the (very short) post is just reference to a Damon Linker piece on the homophobic views of the late political philosopher Leo Strauss. And so I ask: Where are these legitimate arguments?

[A digression (you could skip this part): I’d get a lot more blogging done if I did it in the manner of Andrew Sullivan. Write a couple sentences, quote a couple meaty paragraphs from someone else’s blog. There you go. Quick content. However, when I started this blog, I made a promise to myself that my words would always outnumber anyone else’s.[1] Happily, since I’m only quoting eight words from Sullivan, this is an easy standard today.]

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Think of Poor Oklahoma

34 States today. One more coming tomorrow

With today’s decision starting marriage equality in Montana (and bringing the total to 34 states), there’s now a nice solid block of the western states, a good chunk running from New England down to the upper South, and a group of Midwestern states. But this leaves Oklahoma there in the midst of states that don’t marriage equality, joined to a state that does, only by the Panhandle. Had the Republic of Texas not ceded the area, poor Oklahoma wouldn’t be adjoining any marriage equality state, saved only by a narrow connection to New Mexico.

There are parts of the country that continue to surprise me. The Sixth Circuit decision certainly caught me by surprise, though it might be the case that sends marriage equality to the Supreme Court. I would have thought the Fifth Circuit would be more likely, though we are still waiting for the appeals on that one.

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Divorce, Insanity, and Celery Tonic

Sometimes a story is a story.

The New York papers had a scandalous and salacious story in the October 22, 1889 papers. The whole story reads like something out of a Victorian melodrama. A perfumer enters a hotel room where his wife is with another man! The young man flees, and the perfumer drives his wife in a carriage to her father’s home. He wakes the old man, leaving him with the woman, saying, “There is your daughter, keep her.”

If this were an 1889 play, there would be no hope of reviving it in 2014. But this story really happened. Well, it sort of happened. During this time, there were morning and evening papers, so before New Yorkers went to bed on October 22, 1889, they had heard both sides of the story. Or at least the beginning of the story.

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Marriage Equality in Twenty-Nine States!

If not outdated, it will be soon

Now I’m playing games with the data; I’m just giddy. With twenty-nine states with marriage equality, we’ve got three groups of states. In the Northeast, we have Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina (Massachusetts goes first and gets bolded because it was first. And bold). In the Midwest, we have Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. And in the West, we have Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah (never thought that would happen this early), Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

If we want to link them all together, we could go with Montana, North Dakota, and Ohio. Starting with Montana, we could substitute in South Dakota and Kentucky. Or we could go for Wyoming, South Dakota, and (as before) either Ohio or Kentucky. I’d like to believe that Ohio was more likely, but the map at Wikipedia says otherwise.

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Why the Louisiana Marriage Ruling Doesn’t Bother Me (Much)

Our love is bigger than Louisiana

The winning streak is over. I’ve lost count of how many district court wins there have been for marriage equality since the Windsor decision last June. Let’s just call it a bunch. That bunch of cases includes each of the appeals districts, and in many of those districts, there have been further rulings (including one today) that have called for overturning bans on same-sex marriage.

Judge Martin Feldman is aware that he is running contrary to the stream of opinions, and he certainly is entitled to believe that he is right and all those other judges are wrong. On the other hand, I’ve read the opinion, and this is not one for the ages. Paige Lavender (is that her real name?) writing at Huffington Post offers what she calls The 6 Most F*&%ed Up Parts Of The Louisiana Gay Marriage Ruling.

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Posner on Same-Sex Marriage Is Music to My Ears

Matching bands! An an assault
on tradition!

Yesterday, the New York Times (and lots of other places) reported on the August 26 hearing at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. This was a combined hearing in which the states of Indiana and Wisconsin (both in the Seventh) attempted to defend their bans on same-sex marriage before an appeals court of three judges.

Of the three judges, Ann Clair Williams, David Hamilton, and Richard Posner, most of the media attention has been on Judge Posner, never a shrinking violet. Posner, until fairly recently, maintained a blog, originally titled “The “Posner Blog,” until he started collaborating on the blog with Gary S. Becker. A quick check of the blog shows that with Becker’s death, Judge Posner decided to terminate the blog.

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Protection of Marriage —1920 Edition

Till death, or Congress,
do you part

One of the claims made by the opponents of marriage for same-sex couples is that by allowing same-couples to marry, marriage will be further devalued. Some go on to say that the real enemy is divorce (since in any given year, it’s likely that there will be more divorces of opposite-sex couples than marriages of same-sex couples), but that if they give up on same-sex marriage, they will never be able to fight divorce.

That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me (then again, the objections to same-sex marriage don't make any sense to me). What if they tried it? Then they could find out what the public reaction was, if they had any hope of making divorce difficult or impossible to obtain.

It would seem that in 1920, someone tried just that: fighting divorce, and the New York Evening World was having none of it, printing this editorial on July 10, 1920.

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Sanctity of Marriage — Old News Division

Marriage. No joke.

I wasn't able to turn up the New York Sun article that the Washington Evening Star claimed to be reprinting, so all I have to go on is the cautionary tale titled, "Mock Marriages are not Funny." Well, I suppose they could be. But it must be taken as the official position of the Evening Star that you take absolutely no merriment in the following account.

The article describes what transpired as a "mixed marriage," and we all know what that means, don't we? Well, I thought we did. When I searched the term, my first hit was the Wikipedia entry on interracial marriage.

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