Dr. Martin Luther King spent nights in jail, marching on hot nights, being spit upon threatened with death and became a martyr to the cause of Civil Rights.

Just because Illinois is was the first state to strike down sodomy laws does not mean that it is an equal rights state. In my childhood in Illinois, they were an apartheid street (the south American women who lived accross from us was referred to as that n*****r.
If you want to have homosexual sex, Illinois is a fine place to be. If you want to express your love for another man or woman, then move to Massachusett’s or Vermont. If you want to change the states, you must stand up and be counted.

Polis’s RFM Act repeals the DOMA section that allows states to ignore same-sex marriage from other states.

It also requires federal benefits: “For the purposes of any Federal law in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State.”

True, it doesn’t create a right to get married. But the Congress does not have the constitutional power to validate marriages. Any such statute would immediately be struck down by the courts because Congress doesn’t have the power to do so under the federal constitution.

I’m totally with you on the sentiment that you’re sick of going state by state. But wishing doesn’t make it so. We mustn’t be angry when our leaders do what they can.

Anyway, the RFM Act is going nowhere soon. At this point, we don’t even have hate crimes or ENDA. First things first.

By the way, here’s who’s dragging their feet on ENDA: http://bit.ly/45WGMc Why don’t you complain to them?

Polis, as he is OBVIOUSLY a socialist, is just trying to confuse the teabaggers and such.

Illinois was the first state to repeal its sodomy law in 1971. Lawerence v. Texas was decided in 2003, 32 years later. Anyone who thinks that same-sex marriage will be resolved on a faster timetable is seriously deluded.

soooo…currently, my heterosexual, still married parents, can move to any of the 50 states and be recognized as a couple at both the state and federal level.

but if i get married to another man, in vermont for example, my marriage is not federally recognized because of DOMA, and if i move to georgia, my marriage has no legal meaning whatsoever because of the constitutional amendment they have undoubtedly passed (allowable because of DOMA).

however, if the RFM passes, my VT marriage will be both state and federally recognized, in VT. but if i move to GA, it will only be federally recognized, and the state of GA will be able to disregard it as they can disregard incestuous relationships (according to Eric Holder’s and the DOJ).

and the state-to-state issue probably won’t be settled until there is enough case law or scientific info to support the idea that LGBTs are a class worthy of strict scrutiny and the SCOTUS passes a loving vs. VA type ruling based on the 14th amendment.

do i get the gist of it? anyone?

A lot of the marriage equality posts on this blog demonstrate a flawed understanding of the basics of constitutional law from the principles of federalism and the enumerated powers of Congress to equal protection jurisprudence. That would be forgiveable were it not for the fact that they are written with a tone of authority.

The health care debate has shown the lack of cohesion in the Democratic majority and how truly liberal/progressive legislation fractures the coalition fairly quickly. Regrettably pro-LGBT legislation still falls in this category as evidenced by the slow progress of seemingly uncontroversial bills like hate crimes and ENDA.

But what really irks me is the implicit suggestion in this post that Rep. Polis could just wave a magic wand and suddenly all the gays could get married. Some days Obama seems to have that wand, other days Barney Frank does. Today Jared Polis gets the wand.

“But Rep. Jerry Nadler’s Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA and force the government to recognize legal same-sex marriages, does nothing itself to achieve marriage equality throughout the land.”

For record Jill, no one has been arguing that marriage is strictly a state issue. The predominate argue is that it is both a federal and state issue because the rights accrued are at the state and federal level. Indeed, ending DOMA alone does not address the affirmative aspect of the issue of federal rights.

Our community has been arguing for all that time that marriage has always been a state matter, and that states should be free to allow couples to marry, and your response to a bill saying that is…to criticize it?

Are you arguing for a federal bill requiring states to allow gay marriage? Such a thing wouldn’t even be constitutional, let alone politically viable.

You might want to rethink this post.