New Jersey has legalized gay marriage, although it still isn’t clear what it will be called. Here’s the decision (.pdf). This might have some political consequences for the midterms, but who cares? They did the right thing.
What’s on your mind?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Excellent news!
SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE TAKES PRIORITY OVER GAY MARRIAGE!!!
(Flame/troll me if you want, I don’t care.)
The courts won’t have any say in health care programs. It would be wonderful if there was any political awareness of access to medicine as a constitutional right, but that just ain’t gonna happen in America, at least not until Congress makes it happen first. So let’s just celebrate what crumbs we do get from the judiciary.
The courts are doing what they are supposed to! And, the fact of the matter is that people do want their health care costs lowered and single payer would do that! So explain to me the logic of rewarding congresscritters who ignore what people want with contributions and votes!
Well, in my current world, when the courts do what they’re supposed to it’s cause for amazement and celebration.
I’m thinking that Bush has managed to surprise even me with a new peak performance of his trademark idiotic bombast. I just can’t believe even he would have the frigging arrogance to tell the so-called Iraqi government that US patience has its limits. IOW, we wrecked your house and killed your family, and our brave firefighters have been dying like flies trying to put out the embers with gasoline because that’s what I think works best and anyone who says otherwise is a terrorist. Now we’re getting sick of you trying to spray water out of hydrants that we destroyed, and you’d better shape up you’ll be sorry. What the fuck’s wrong with you people, anyway? And I’m very happy with all the progress you’ve been making.
Unbelievable. Even now, even after all that’s gone before, unbelievable. And 35 or 40 percent of the American people have approved this message. Even more unbelievable.
Wrong. Read the decision. It specifically does NOT approve gay marriage. Aravosis at AmericaBlog, not unexpectedly, has the smartest commentary on this yet today. The New Jersey Supreme Court adopted EXACTLY the view propounded by George W. Bush in 2004, namely that gay people were entitled to civil unions, but not to “marriage.”
I think the court’s decision wisely goes halfway toward what I personally think is the logical solution: the government should have NOTHING to do with “marriage” for anybody. The government should only have power to authorize civil unions. “Marriage” is something people could apply for separately from a religious organization, if they wish, and if the religious organization agrees.
That was not the Bush idea. He advocated a very limited set of rights for same-sex couples. The NJ court was very clear in insisting that such couples have EVERY right that married ones do, whether the legislature decides to call it marriage or something else.
Other than that, I agree 100% with your second paragraph: the US government should get out of the marriage business, period.
Thanks. I think I read Aravosis’s piece too quickly!
Wouldn’t it be something if the New Jersey legislature simply changed the state statutes to read that the word “marriage” will be changed to the word “civil union,” and added a section to make this status available to same-sex couples identically as available to mixed-sex couples (that is, subject to identical restrictions regarding age, competency, duress, bigamy, etc.).
NEW JERSEY OUTLAWS MARRIAGE! That’s the headline I want to see.
shit. I just lost two hours of work and research.
Really interesting stuff too.
It was a look at the history of black congresspeople and what leadership positions they have held. I am so pissed, I was almost done too.
I just closed the window by accident. Is there anyway to retrieve a closed window?
If it was a document you probably had auto-backup on, right? So there should be a backup file somewhere.
None that I know of. Sorry.
I’ve been known to compose stuff in some other editor (like Notepad) and transfer the information to a browser window when I’m done with it and happy with the results, for precisely this reason.
and from what I can tell from using it for five minutes, it’s pretty swell.
If you haven’t upgraded your browser yet, what’s stopping you?
(Oh yeah, IE7 is out, but I don’t recommend it for BooTrib regulars. It does a bad job of rendering diary pages, and until someone comes up with a way to reconfigure the BT stylesheet to account for this, comments to diaries will be next to unreadable.)
What is on my mind as I read about a State Supreme Court saying gay marriage is legal, is that it is a shame that this decision is not coming from the U.S. Supreme Court.