Perhaps it was morally right to adopt a strategy of using state courts to gain full marriage equality, damn the consequences, but in retrospect there was little real debate within what's called the gay "community" about the risks of going for full marriage, rather than spousal rights through civil unions.
From the AP (via the Washington Blade):
German lawmakers expanded the rights of same-sex couples last week, allowing registered domestic partners to adopt each other's children and making rules on splitting up and alimony similar to those for heterosexual marriages.
That's the incremental approach that got the Netherlands and Belgium from civil unions/partnerships to full marriage -- but not in one, judicially degreed swoop. It's the path we were on in this country, state by state, until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's marriage ruling, followed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's high-media (but legally vacuous) gay marriage decree.
As good as those developments felt, they were seen as a radical slap in the face by the conservative U.S. electorate, which differs markedly from Canada, where judicially ordered same-sex marriage is not, apparently, provoking a comparable backlash. But in this country, the slew of state amendments banning gay marriage -- and in several cases, now even civil unions -- shows that we've reaped the whirlwind.
From liberal Tina Brown's Washington Post column:
On Wednesday morning, even the gay editors of liberal upscale magazines were prepared to tell you that if there's one person who should get a big bouquet from Karl Rove it's Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, aka Mrs. [columnist] Anthony Lewis, who forced her state to authorize gay marriage.
From a Wall Street Journal editorial:
Having ignored the 11 state gay marriage initiatives before Tuesday's election, our friends in the mainstream media now can't talk about anything else. They seem astonished that even voters in Oregon and Michigan, states that President Bush lost, supported traditional marriage by landslides.
Will we have a wide-open debate about strategy now? In the wake
of last week's electoral losses, activists' are pledging a new
round of lawsuits to overturn what the voters decreed. Will these
suits focus on the civil unions bans while working to educate the
country on marriage rights? I doubt it.
[Update: A reader responds, in our mailbag.]
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