Saturday, January 17, 2015

Is the argument overwhelming?

Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal takes a look at what would happen if the Supremes say that banning same-sex marriage is permissible under the constitution. In all the states that gained marriage equality through the courts in 2014 someone would challenge the district our circuit ruling. There may be a struggle over issues of standing, as happened in the Calif. case. But likely a good number of those bans would be reinstated.

Commenters take up the story. Likely by January of 2016 we would start the slog of individual state campaigns to revoke all those marriage protection amendments. Some will fall rather easily (though not without a big outlay in dollars and effort), some will persist for many more years. And if we lose any in the 2016 battles the Fundies will draw up their list of other issues they will try to inflict on us.

David Boies, a lead lawyer in the Calif. marriage case before the Supremes (though they decided on standing, not merit), says the Supremes will rule in the Michigan case in our favor. He says the argument is overwhelming for marriage equality. With his intimate knowledge of the case, he should know.

Then again, this is essentially more speculation. That usually doesn't get me very far, so I'll try to ignore this kind of stuff – at least until reports of the oral arguments in April and there are reports of seeing the justices in action.

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