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| A Michigan family |
The ban against same-sex marriage in Michigan has been shot
down. Two women in their fifties have
gotten married in the grand state of Michigan.
I’m not being cute by revealing their ages. It’s significant that they have been waiting
twenty-seven years to do this.
And I waited all day yesterday for the decision in
Michigan. I was afraid it was going to
be another “Yes, but…” decision. Yes,
it’s wrong to discriminate against gay people, but if that’s what the good citizens
the state want, that’s the way it goes. “It’s
wrong, and unconstitutional, and yes, we should overthrow it, but we don’t have
to do all this overnight! We can give
people time to get used to the idea.”
That line of thought has always bothered me. I understand politics must be practical. I also think there is some wisdom to getting
as many people as possible behind the same-sex marriage idea before launching
into a new social practice. It cuts down
on the chance of a backlash. But if
you’re on the receiving end of this justice delayed, it feels for all the world
like justice denied. And you get real
tired, I can tell you, of listening to people tell you why they think they can
do this to you.
How refreshing that Judge Friedman, who announced his
decision today, did not then turn around, as others have done before him, and
stay his own ruling so that people could “catch up with the sea change.” He made a clear and unequivocal statement – discrimination against gays and lesbians is wrong and they/we should not
have to live with it another day. He
left it for others to do the dirty work of delay.
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| Glenna DeJong and Marsha Caspar |
Friedman took the same line of reasoning as fellow
judges in Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah before him. When the Supreme Court threw out DOMA, with it went the reasoning that discrimination against LGBT people is justified, and the same law that prohibits interracial marriage should apply here. To be sure, the state’s Attorney General was
ready to do the dirty work of flinging a spanner into the works and applied
with the Federal Appeals Court in Cincinnati for a delay. But it will take time to process that
request, and in the meantime Glenna
DeJong and Marsha Caspar of Lansing are married and the three kids in the picture above, if all goes well, will soon be able to say the same thing about their mommies.
Where
did I leave my champagne glass?
Also right up there with the immense satisfaction that comes
with noting that rights have been extended now to an 18th state of
the Union comes the satisfaction of hearing Judge Friedman express his views on
the Regnerus study. You remember Mark
Regnerus, of the University of Texas.
Put out the most astonishingly badly constructed study, clearly
manufactured to demonstrate the views of the religious right that gays and
lesbians make bad parents. The American
Sociological Association and others, including Regnerus’s own colleagues at Texas spoke out against the study, but
the right kept on touting it as “evidence” that gay people make bad
parents. And then, building on that false premise, made a clumsy leap of
logic and claimed that because they don’t make good parents they shouldn’t be allowed to
marry at all. Because only people with kids should marry?
Risk of brain damage has been lessened all over the country
now that people can stop slapping their foreheads in disbelief that this shill
for the religious right, thinking he was doing the Lord’s work, was taken
seriously as an academic.
Two reasons for champagne.
I only really needed one, but two, as I say, is nice.
DeJong and Caspar: Rick Pluta/Twitter Photo from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/22/1286602/-Michigan-Issues-1st-Same-Sex-Marriage-License-Will-it-stand-up-on-appeal
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