The Southern LGBT community has a lot to be proud of and deserves credit for the leadership we’ve provided to our region. North Carolina was the first Southern state to elect an openly gay elected official, and we were the last to adopt this sort of amendment. Our state stood fast against the marriage-amendment movement for 16 years. In fact, before North Carolina even considered this amendment, three fifths of the country had already adopted it, including the liberal bastions of Hawaii, California, and Oregon. While I had hoped that we would been the first state in the country to defeat a marriage amendment, I remain extremely proud to have stood with an extraordinary group of activists, elected officials, businesses, and families who worked diligently against it these last eight months. When your amendments passed, we cried with you. When your marriage laws were enacted, we celebrated with you. Now, while North Carolina’s LGBT community is suffering from this difficult loss, we deserve the same support and solidarity we provided you; we do not deserve your enmity.
Another Judge Rules DOMA Unconstitutional
On Thursday evening, a federal judge in California held that the Defense of Marriage Act and a provision of tax law unconstitutionally limit same-sex couples and domestic partners from participating in the long-term care plan offered by the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS.
The May 24 decision in the class-action lawsuit came from U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken, a Clinton appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California whose chambers are located in Oakland, and is the first federal court decision relating to the 1996 marriage-defining law since President Obama announced on May 9 that he believes that same-sex couples should be able to marry
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I have waited a log time to come around to marriage. I always thought that not having to get married was one of the benefits of being gay. Now that I can, I find myself challenged to imagine myself committing to another man without limits, in the full light of public knowledge. What was once unthinkable is now becoming commonplace. As Senator Schumer said about NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s wedding as a symbol of gay-marriage acceptance, it is no longer a question of “if” but “when” it becomes a universally adopted part of the American way of life.
The board of the N.A.A.C.P. voted to endorse same-sex marriage on Saturday, putting the weight of the country’s most prominent civil rights group behind a cause that has long divided some quarters of the black community.
[H]onestly, the “first gay president” label just doesn’t work, no matter what rhetorical device you employ. And it makes us gays seem silly and starved for validation.
What Straight Allies Need to Understand About Gay Marriage and States’ Rights
But too many people whose marriages are not up for debate have been griping that his announcement was too little, too late. He’s endorsing federalism, argued Adam Serwer in Mother Jones. He’s championing state’s rights, complained left-of-center blogger Digby: “This is the essence of retrograde, reactionary politics and there’s a long history of these ‘sovereign’ states exercising their ‘rights’ to deny minorities their freedom.” Even House Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn was upset with the president’s approach. “I depart from the president on the state-by-state approach. If you consider this to be a civil right, and I do, I don’t think civil rights ought to be left up to a state-by-state approach,” he said Monday.
Such critics of Obama are wrong. They are wrong about what the administration has done and said, wrong on the politics of gay marriage, and — most important — they are wrong on the law.
