That’s not to say we don’t lobby the feds to federally recognize those marriages and civil unions from states that DO recognize them. There is already a move afoot to repeal the section of DOMA that defines marriage as between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law.

Another good example is the recent tactic of police and security guards preventing people from simply taking photos in public places (Especially bad in England), although in almost all cases there are no regulations against it.

Thankfully, one man is shedding some light on the situation.

Philip Howard, who is a lawyer, a philanthropist and the author of a new book, “Life Without Lawyers,” is one example of the people in America who are the result of what can be done with an individual life when one is more open than closed to the range of human and career possibility in our country.

A refined and handsome white-haired man, Howard does not offer any clue to his actual background and how far he climbed to a position of such easeful privilege from somewhere near the very bottom of the social barrel. He began in eastern Kentucky as the impoverished son of an impoverished country preacher.

Howard is a perfect representative of the Obama era because, like our embattled President and his wife, Howard projects more confidence than discomfort and says what he has to say in a tone that seems much more accurate than speculative.

“We have to face up to the fact that we are in the process of losing our freedom due to a set of laws that have intimidated so many people that they have become paralyzed,” Howard told me recently.

He went on to say that fear of litigation has become so huge a shadow over our nation that people tremble in it and do not know how to move for fear of being sued. Our courts are clogged up with cases that have less to do with things of importance than with a momentary instance of imposed culpability for very minor offenses.

“Subjects like racism, sexism and child abuse are very serious things. There can be no argument about that. But their importance has been diluted by all of the cases that make claims so far from the realms of intelligence and common sense. This leads to the real problems and the real abuses being trivialized,” the lawyer explained.

As Howard makes clear in his book, freedom is something that extremists of either persuasion find too much to bear. Their desire for control is to finally take it all to the courts or hector for the passage of laws that put opponents in their proper places.

Any lawyer at Howard’s intellectual level is familiar with our social history and knows certain things quite well: that injustice and unfairness have been held in place during those periods when even unconstitutional laws were allowed to create bigoted order. Part of what has been our nation’s mission of advancement has been to remove those unfair laws from the books and take on the conventions of thought that supported them.

If you support Obama, and you did, then you own all his rightist politicis. There’s no way to weasel out of it.

LOL. Iowa’s big on corn and pork. Insert joke here.

Bill, either you did not read the article I posted or you are simply lying. In either case, you are wrong. The government announced it would introduce legislation on the same day the Supreme Court upheld the lower court rulings.

But goodnight to you.

@gay super hero:
I agree with you about action on the federal level.
On the other hand, don’t discount the actions of smaller states just because they managed to accomplish something that larger states have not yet. Think of it as a good example to follow.

Our province is only 1 million and was one of the poorest in the country, but we managed to bring in universal health care. That was five years before our federal government brought it in country-wide.

The challenges in the House of Commons you mention Bill? People knew that wasn’t going to have any effect on the final outcome. That had more to do with the opposition trying to force Liberals to declare how they would vote on the issue to make them look bad or break party ranks. It was politics.

The real decision was made in the courts, and governments had no choice but to follow.

You have no choice. Every time you comment on politics you get shot down in flames. Imagine, a Canadian forgetting that Canada has a Parliament and that it passed the SSM law because of pressure from the LGBT movement.

In response you resort to playing Rou Cohn, but, as usual, not very well. It’s not that your hearts no in it, it’s just that your lack of knowledge, imagination and your tiresome fussiness makes your opinions beside the point.

And it dispels your presumption that you’re really on our side, but just interested in correcting a few or our overenthusiastic mistakes. Be as rude as you want, it makes clear that you and I are on opposite sides of the political battlefield.

Who cares about a state of three million at the back of beyond?

American queers should really get a grip. Fighting for marriage state-by-state only serves to validate your opponents’ argument that same-sex marriage “should be left to the states”. Meanwhile federal law still doesn’t recognise those marriages. They don’t get the same fiscal benefits as heterosexuals and marrying a foreign national is out of the question since citizenship rights are also decided federally. Is this really marriage? I don’t think so.

Lgbt’s should really focus their fight on the federal level, doing everything they can to help the election of friendly representatives and the appointment of friendly judges. Everything else is a waste of time, money and resources – which is exactly what the homophobes of this world want.

If the civil rights movement had fought for civil rights state-by-state they’d still be at it.

@Bill Perdue:
No Bill, I was talking to you personally, not Americans generally.
You were making your usual argument that a change of this sort only comes about when people turn to the radical left and force it.

I am telling you that is not how it happened here. I know I didn’t post the most scholarly of links, but it is all there in black and white.

Marriage equality passed in Canada for two reasons:
1)It was the right thing to do
2)Courts struck down the old law because it violated our charter of rights, and that was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. This happened before the federal vote.
Even though some of the provinces voted to change the law earlier (most because they supported it) the writing was on the wall; everyone knew the law had to change.

It seems like Iowa made their decision in a similar reasoned and orderly fashion… or did I miss the story about the general strike and the ultimatum from the anarcho/labour/queer coalition?

I can appreciate you get all sweaty at the thought of hardball politics and uprising masses, but the fact is lasting change usually does not come about through force, nor from extremes of the political spectrum. Not to say activism isn’t necessary, but it cannot change anything without a shift in the general public.

Sorry to have to be rude Bill.
I agree with some of your opinions, but most of your ideas are sheer fiction; they are surprisingly similar to the dogma of those religions you hate, and have about as much of a footing in reality. They also rely solely on conflict, non-negotiation, and demonizing your enemies.
They lack any sense of the lessons of history, or of how politics and the general public actually function in the real world.

Sore loser, emphasis on ‘loser’.
—————————————————-
@strumpetwindsock: Why are you implying that Americans are bloodthirsty arsonists. “torching of buildings or hanging of despots” and “Sorry man…. no blood.” Or is it just me you’re lying about.

If Canadians, for whatever reason, accepted, or were forced to accept royalist rule (thus the Royal Assent on the same sex marriage bill) that doesn’t justify your suggestion that Americans are bloodthirsty anarchists. That’s what the royalists said in ’76. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

it all happened in the courts. Really, aren’t you forgetting about a little thing that federal law legalizing SSM that passed in Parliament and survived a couple of attacks. That had something to do with it.

You pedantry keeps you from having a clue about US politics and your love for splitting hairs is just and excuse to be against anyone or any group that actually fights for what it wants, but I’d have you at least knew enough about the history of your own country to know it wasn’t all the courts. And even that was due to sea change in public opinion brought about by the fighting spirit of LGBT Canadians over the last few decades, which was finally ratified by the courts and Parliament.

The same spirit exists here, however much that upsets you, and although the Courts and Congress may never get around to ratifying our struggle before we get down to the fight for fundamental changes here it won’t be for want of our fighting spirit.

Iowa’s the one with the potatoes, right? (j/k)

GO IOWA HAWKEYES!

Mike
http://cdbaby.com/cd/mikeandrews2

Where would the bigots go? I’d suggest Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death. They’d fit right in with Ahmadinejad.

@Disgusted American: I’m as disgusted as you are, especially by the attacks on the judiciary. Where were these judiciophobes when the Supreme Court handed down Kelo v. New London?

We had to go to war to destroy the evil empire of Southern slavery. We are entering what should ideally be the end game of the gay rights movement, and if it can be done without a single shot fired what an achievement that will be.

So it doesn’t seem odd to me that rural areas or smaller centres sometimes produce more progressive policies than larger cities (which may be more on the cutting edge, but which also have a strongly-entrenched right-wing).

@OhYeah: That actually reminds me of something funny; a friend of mine moved here from the coast a few years ago and at one point she said to me “I had no idea there were so many dykes here”. She didn’t realize there are a lot of women here, gay and straight, who have the haircut and the look. Butch chic is almost indistinguishable from farm wife chic.

STOP calingl it GAY MARRIAGE – It’s Marriage EQUALITY
STOP calling it SAME SEX MARRIAGE – We do NOT call hetero Marriage “Opposite Sex Marriage”

If you don’t like Marriage Equality – then DON’T marry someone of the same sex
NO Religion will be forced to Marry anyone they deem “unworthy”
NO Religion will be Locked up or Fined for speaking out against LGBT people – tho Tony Perkins and the AFA WILL LIE and say otherwise(even tho that’s something Jesus would NEVER do..IF he ever existed)

America – LIVE UP TO YOUR Constant spread of LIES about Personal Freedoms..Either we are ALL Free, or NONE of us are!

When in America has the Public EVER gotten to VOTE on any other Minority Rights? THEY HAVEN’T!
When in America was Religion USED to FIGHT Equality for Blacks,Women etc etc……TOO MANY TIMES to COUNT!!!

Furthermore, my read on this is that this is a done deal, there will be no ballot initiative in 2012, IMO.

“It’s over with, let’s just deal with it, there’s work to be done” is a very Midwestern attitude. And we don’t take kindly to outsiders meddling in our politics either. As corrupt as we can be sometimes, we will own our own and tell others to back off.

There is not a lot of hard right activism in the Midwest with the exception of Indiana and portions of Ohio. There is some hard left activism.

Moreso, I think there is a strong sense of pragmatism, justice, and fairness in these parts that can go both ways. Midwest culture is not idealistic at all (unlike, say the West Coast). It’s about what works.

well done iowa supreme court!

I’m not up on your political climate down there, but there’s a lot of hard left activism out on the west coast up here, but just as much on the hard right. It’s very polarized and fractious.
Here in the prairies the political climate is a lot cooler, and relatively closer to the centre (Alberta excepted). But a lot of the most progressive and cooperative policies and come from right here, not where people are screaming and fighting each other all the time.

I am grossly oversimplifying, of course, but having lived in both places, there is some truth in it. Waste too much energy on vitriol and that becomes the only thing you fight for.

anyone who speaks differently can leave the country…if you dont like our rules then get the fuck out.

signed

-a proud GAY 18 year old :)

I mean, well…Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois already have inclusive ENDA, hate crimes legislation…the whole nine yards. I think that all of these states adopted DOMA when it was passed in 96. Marriage equality is pratically the only thing missing. Now Iowa has marriage equality, a civil unions bill will be up for a vote in Illinois, and Minnesota…who knows?

We are more progressive in the Midwest than we are given credit for.