We’re not fans of Karl Rove, but the man is a canny strategist: This morning on ABC’s This Week, the Sith Lord said he could see Republican presidential candidates supporting marriage equality by 2016.
He also predicted the Supreme Court will vote in favor of marriage equality in the two cases it will hear this coming week, but the their ruling will leave legalization of same-sex marriages up to the states. “What we may see is a decision here that in essence has, not a 5-4 decision, but a 6-3, 7-2, that says leave it up to the states. In fact we could see an 8-1.”
Getting in a car and driving to another state to have your union recognized may seem unconscionable, but interracial couples dealt with that very situation for decades. So did heterosexual couples looking to elope. (Many would head to Maryland, which required neither a blood test nor witnesses.)
Is that a good enough result for you? Or is the idea of piecemeal equality unconscionable? Give your ruling in the comments section below.
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h/t: Joe. My. God.
NormdePlume
Turdblossom: You’re STILL not in jail. Amazing.
Dionte
It is time to move beyond this, the Supreme Court needs to rule in favor of equality for all, not the states, otherwise how can call ourselves united.
gaym50ish
The states will fall, one by one, as the Canadian provinces did before same-sex marriage was adopted nationally in 2005. I don’t see a problem with letting each state set its own marriage rules, as they do now in setting the age of consent and whether cousins can marry, etc. The court will probably agree with the lower court in the Prop 8 case and let California have gay marriage without affecting other states, so we’ll be up to 10 states plus the District of Columbia.
The more significant question is whether gay married couples will receive federal benefits, so I see the DOMA case as the more important one. It is clearly discriminatory to grant marriage status under federal laws to every other legally married couple from every state or foreign country and deny it to gay married couples. If you need to have a partner covered under Social Security survivor benefits or have your same-sex military spouse get the free healthcare that every straight spouse gets, you can always go to a marriage-equality state to get married.
The ruling in that case should not only strike down DOMA but grant federal recognition of all same-sex marriages.
Hunter
Considering how accurate Rove was about the 2012 election, I’ll take this with a grain of salt. Or a pound.
If the Supreme Court winds up with a state-by-state decision, we’re going to see a series of federal lawsuits, because there is a fundamental constitutional question involved: the states are going to have to prove that there is a legitimate, rational government interest in excluding same-sex couples from marriage. They haven’t managed it yet.
MuscleModelBlog.com
I don’t think that a piecemeal, state-by-state solution is the best way to handle this. What if, for instance, a same-sex couple gets married in New York, but then gets into a car accident in South Carolina. One of them is injured and taken to the hospital–does the other person have visitation rights in that state? It’s going to be a mess.
yaoming
If Rove is right (and he’s been very good at being wrong recently) then it will be a countdown to see which will be the last state to be against marriage-equality. What a shameful day it will be for that state.
1EqualityUSA
“Just as the nation could not endure half slave and half free but eventually had to go all one way or all the other, we will not be able to get by with a situation in which some couples are married in one state, not married when they move to or travel through the next, and married again when they reach a third.
If same sex marriage is legally recognized in a small number of states, it will spread throughout the nation, either through judicial action under the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause or by the working of informal cultural pressures. Some states – Utah would be one – may try to hold out, but sooner or later they will be whipped into line.”
–Robert P. George, Chairman,
National Organization for Marriage,
speaking at Brigham Young University,
October 28, 2008
The head NOMskull said it best to a pack of fi’thy Mormans back in ’08
1EqualityUSA
Did Karl Rove’s face stop developing in the 8th week of gestation?
Cagnazzo82
It’s hard to believe that there was once a republican president who forced racial integration onto an unwilling state.
There is no more concept of a greater good left in America these days.
Jim Hlavac
The nation doesn’t work on a remote control. The whole place has been evolving for 60 years. It’s speeding up. Let it run its own course. It makes no difference if we “win” or “lose” or how wide spread the ruling is, or how narrow – the fact is that they dealt with it – and the all know well that it won’t go away and that it will all continue. And no matter what they rule our maddest opponents will still be mad. There’s just too many more cases for this to be the last time they deal with the issue. I think they’d rather resolve it now than keep dealing with it. And, given the utter lies and mush of all the briefs against us — it’s going to be hard for anyone to agree that it’s logical or legal.