Hooray!
Thanks, SCOTUS, for being reasonable (well, 5 of you, at least). :)
It's interesting to watch today's decision come down for a few reasons.
First, this is happening exactly as I've always predicted. The next step is for someone to get married in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, then move to another state that doesn't, sue, and watch the 14th amendment kick in and basically decide that every state just legalized marriage equality (it may happen state by state before then, but I doubt it).
Second, since I came out in 1987, I was witness to the shift in activism from the previous LGBT generation. Because of the horrible AIDS crisis that was just coming to fruition politically, my generation was ACT-UP and "we're here, we're queer" and NGLTF and, essentially, a great deal of "mainstreaming" in order to achieve our political goals (which were incredibly prevalent and timely at the time, given people were dying all around us). Contrast that to a lot of the previous 20 years' worth of community activism, which was more about establishing our own unique identity as a community, including doing away with such classically heterosexual institutions like marriage. I mean, get married? Who'd want to do that? Let's create our own families and relationships and to hell with those "normal" people. It was definitely a time of free love, even if it was tinged with a glacially slow change in societal attitudes (the 70's were better than the 50's, just not by much). So the idea of my progenitors celebrating - or even contemplating - marriage equality was, I'm sure, a completely foreign concept (as if it could ever happen in their lifetime anyway, right?). And now watching the last 20-30 years change even more as the next generation is coming out and establishing its own set of priorities, it's pretty interesting to watch indeed. :)
And, lastly, Scalia needs to take a long walk off a short pier. That man is a scumbag.
It's interesting to watch today's decision come down for a few reasons.
First, this is happening exactly as I've always predicted. The next step is for someone to get married in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, then move to another state that doesn't, sue, and watch the 14th amendment kick in and basically decide that every state just legalized marriage equality (it may happen state by state before then, but I doubt it).
Second, since I came out in 1987, I was witness to the shift in activism from the previous LGBT generation. Because of the horrible AIDS crisis that was just coming to fruition politically, my generation was ACT-UP and "we're here, we're queer" and NGLTF and, essentially, a great deal of "mainstreaming" in order to achieve our political goals (which were incredibly prevalent and timely at the time, given people were dying all around us). Contrast that to a lot of the previous 20 years' worth of community activism, which was more about establishing our own unique identity as a community, including doing away with such classically heterosexual institutions like marriage. I mean, get married? Who'd want to do that? Let's create our own families and relationships and to hell with those "normal" people. It was definitely a time of free love, even if it was tinged with a glacially slow change in societal attitudes (the 70's were better than the 50's, just not by much). So the idea of my progenitors celebrating - or even contemplating - marriage equality was, I'm sure, a completely foreign concept (as if it could ever happen in their lifetime anyway, right?). And now watching the last 20-30 years change even more as the next generation is coming out and establishing its own set of priorities, it's pretty interesting to watch indeed. :)
And, lastly, Scalia needs to take a long walk off a short pier. That man is a scumbag.