The District of Columbia has joined Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire as places where gay couples can get a marriage license! The D.C. Superior Court began accepting marriage license applications from same-sex couples this morning.
The anticipated marriages of same-sex couples, said Mitch Wood, president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, were “the fruit of decades of public advocacy and organizing by gay citizens and our numerous allies.”
The D.C. Council voted to legalize same-sex marriage in December. Still, there are about 1,200 federal benefits married gay couples won’t have access to, thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Until the federal government ends its commitment to discrimination, all married couples will not be equal.
A hearty congratulations to the happy couples!
Several of my hometown friends are scheduling their weddings right now, which I am SUPER excited about!
Two things about the DC legalization struck me as really criticial: SCOTUS declined petitions to stop the law from going into effect, and Congress did not mobilize to vote it down.
(For those who aren’t familiar with the weirdness of DC politics: the city has no local courts or government beyond the City Council. It’s a federal district, which means it falls under the Federal court system and is technically controlled by Congress–although its citizens have no voting representatives there. This means that Congress can–and does–jerk DC around on a fairly regular basis. But they didn’t this time.)
This is lovely. I honestly believe that DOMA will be gone inside of 10 years, given the momentum on gay rights. (Not that there isn’t a lot of work to do, or that there haven’t been setbacks, just talking about general attitudes in my generation and younger vs. boomers and older.)
Hooray! The Church there is apparently fulfilling on their promise to be a huge dick about it and has decided to stop giving benefits to all the spouses of their employees so that they don’t have to give benefits to the gay ones.
@yvane – I agree with you, but at the same time I think it’s going to be a lot like abortion in that in some places it’s going to be fine and in others it might be technically legal but good luck finding anyone to actually provide the service for you.
@baraqiel: But anyplace that marries straights will have to marry gays, which means every county in the US. The legal remedy will be simple and swift for those who try to opt out. I can’t wait for someone to try to claim “bureaucrat refusal”, along the lines of pharmacists who won’t sell Plan B.
I think it’s great that the Church is showing its true colors. It’s just another male power machine. How handy for them that the people who run the Church don’t have spouses or families.
@baraqiel: Wow, that must be HUGELY popular with those Church employees.
I think gay marriage will be legal nationwide in the next 10-20 years. Yvan’s right, the changing cultural attitude–esp. among the young people who will be in office in the coming decades–is going to be almost impossible to stop. And it won’t be like abortion, because every state clerk’s office will be legally required to give out marriage licenses on a non-discriminatory basis. Sure, you might have some individual holdouts, the way there have been for interracial marriages, but protesters can’t intimidate or shut down government offices the way they can individual doctors and clinics.
How handy for them that the people who run the Church don’t have spouses or families.
…that they’ll admit to.
The Church response to this law made me laugh. It reminds me of those anti-gay-marriage legislative initativess in some states that had the perverse effect of outlawing all marriage and had to be amended (or did it outlaw divorce?) It also reminds me of some anti-discrimination activists who made ironic(?) political campaigns to outlaw hetero marriage. Then I get sad because I realize that they will use this to bolster their sad argument that gay marriage is a threat to straight marriages. It is, but only because of homophobic bigots like the US Bishops. Or rather, it is opposition to same sex marriage that threatens all marriage, threatens the contemporary concept of marriage as based on love and mutual sexual attraction, not control of procreation and the transfer of property.
Oh and DC!!!! Way to make me fall in love with you all over again now that I’m gone. I’m so proud of my city. I consider it a big fuck you to all the anti gay politicians who reside there. Maryland is gonna recognize the marriages too! Was there ever a better time to move away from Virginia, SarahMC?
Things aren’t looking as good for those across the Potomac in Virginia. From Think Progress-
“Just weeks after Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) refused to renew an executive order that would have protected gay and lesbian state workers from discrimination, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is asking the state’s colleges and universities “to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”