Well, I called it correctly six months ago when Barack Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage.
Yesterday Maryland and Maine made history: the first two US states to authorise equal marriage by referendum vote.
Human rights shouldn’t depend on majority vote: the right to marriage is acknowledged as a human right by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948 and by the US Supreme Court since 1967.
Worldwide, same-sex couples can marry in the Netherlands, in Canada, in Belgium, in South Africa, in Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Argentina, and in the US now in eight states, the District of Columbia, and two First Nations, the Coquille and the Suquamish.
Now Obama is re-elected, steady and consistent pressure from the LGBT community should make him live up to his promise to have DOMA repealed, which means the states which have passed homophobic legislation against marriage, will within four years find that as futile as having passed racist legislation against marriage. So by 2017, the US will without qualification have equal marriage. (Once the 1995 DOMA law is repealed, a couple who cannot legally marry in their home state can travel to one that has lifted the ban, wed there, and return home: the US constitution requires that all states recognise marriages legal in the state in which they were performed.)
Letters of Note, 6th November 2012:
Just last week, 10-year-old Sophia Bailey-Klugh wrote and illustrated an endearing letter to U. S. President Barack Obama and, as the daughter of a gay couple, thanked him for supporting same-sex marriage. She then asked for advice on how to respond to those who saw such a thing as “gross and weird.” Her letter, and the reply she soon received, can be seen below.
Scotland will have equal marriage by early 2015.
Before same-sex couples can marry in Scotland, it seems likely that France, Luxembourg, Columbia, and New Zealand will have joined the list of countries which no longer ban same-sex couples from marrying.
Meantime, the leaders of the Catholic Church in Scotland, outgoing and incoming, are still making fools of themselves declaring that all of these countries are going to rack and ruin, that where same-sex marriage is legal people no longer think of marriage as between a man and a woman because thoughts of gay marriage drive out thoughts of straight marriage, that equal marriage leads to polygamy, etc.
The way the world is trending, it would appear that the Catholic Church’s official position on gay marriage is to become as obviously wrong and as much ignored as its official position on contraception and abortion.
Good.
Edinburgh Eye 