Today, the Supreme Court is hearing two important cases regarding marriage equality. You can read more about the cases and their significance, as well as how you can show support here.
Stand for Marriage Equality
Today, the Supreme Court is hearing two important cases regarding marriage equality. You can read more about the cases and their significance, as well as how you can show support here.
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Lianne March 26, 2013, 11:45 am
So hopeful!!!
Christy March 26, 2013, 11:50 am
I went to the multidenominational prayer service this morning! (It was at my new awesome hippie Lutheran church.) We prayed and sang and then marched to the Supreme Court. I had to leave the rally in front of the Court pretty early so I could go back to work. It was very exciting. I’m watching CSPAN now.
Love you Wendy for posting this!
katie March 26, 2013, 11:52 am
thats way cool!
Lianne March 26, 2013, 12:36 pm
Incredible!!
katie March 26, 2013, 11:53 am
so, forgive me, but ive been travelling for the past 3 weeks- is the supreme court making the decision TODAY? or is this just the first day of the hearing?
Wendy March 26, 2013, 11:54 am
First day of hearing. We probably won’t know their official decision until June at the earliest.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:32 pm
Looks like the official decision came out a lot earlier than expected:
GatorGirl March 26, 2013, 11:59 am
I need one of those thingies to share on FB. The website linked doesn’t have a good one, anyone else have one? The “I’m straight but I stand with gay marraige” thing.
GatorGirl March 26, 2013, 12:04 pm
Found one, never mind!
othy March 26, 2013, 12:12 pm
Too bad you don’t have thumbs for the post itself. I would like it a million times if I could.
sarolabelle March 26, 2013, 12:44 pm
Wendy uses the Facebook like. It’s there.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 1:02 pm
Exciting times! Has anyone seen the documentary Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement?
XanderT March 26, 2013, 1:50 pm
I have not, but my sister and her partner have been engaged for 30 years. My marriage only lasted 20 years. Sounds to me like they are the more stable couple.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 1:55 pm
You know what I would love to see more stories about? People who were against gay marriage and then transitioned to being all for it. I love seeing that switch. I’m not sure if I’m just of a younger generation but I have never gotten the big hoopla about it – like why do people care who other people marry? If you don’t believe in gay marriage don’t marry a same sex person! Geez Louise. But I would love to read inspirational stories (preferrably set to sarah mcgloua;lk;lk music) about how it finally clicked for them that all people deserve the same rights and the same love.
FireStar March 26, 2013, 2:12 pm
I would love to see those stories that happen because of personal growth and not just because a family member came out. I mean I’ll take what I can get but it always seems they have to be immediately impacted in their own families before saying “wait – this is wrong”. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to have discrimination or violence or abuse or whatever affect you personally before you speak out about it? Wouldn’t it be nice if bad things happening to – anyone – not just in your family – was enough to motivate people to change? I know that is all rainbows and bunny rabbits of me but holy hell could we get more done quickly if there was some friggin empathy in the world.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:14 pm
WFSS.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:19 pm
Yeah I agree, but I’ll take whatever stories I can get.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:26 pm
I got a story for you. It’s about this girl who met this boy at an NPR party. There were sparks. He asked for her number. Then the CTA bus tracker said the 8 bus was arriving and she high-tailed it out of there without giving him her number. She doesn’t remember why she did that. She was very drunk. She remembers his name was Steve. Or Rick. Or possibly Ron. She remembers he went to Lincoln Park High School. She remembers his father is Assyrian and his mother is Colombian, which is AWESOME because her father is Assyrian and her mother is Columbian….
Use your amazing internet stalking skills to find him for her – NOW.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:28 pm
* went, as in “graduated from Lincoln Park High School many years ago” not as in “goes to currently”. He was definitely not a teenager.
bethany March 26, 2013, 2:37 pm
Craigslist Missed Connections!! DO IT!
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:37 pm
Haha you’re a mess. Recruit JK for this job – she’ll find him in a flash.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:41 pm
His name may be Zach too. I just remember it was NOT an Assyrian name.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:42 pm
I mean she just remembers.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:43 pm
So it could also easily be Paul?
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:51 pm
No Paul is not not-Assyrian.
bethany March 26, 2013, 2:43 pm
I already checked the MCs for you. You should post an ad. Aww, f it. I’ll post it for you. I mean, for “her”
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:55 pm
sweet, she said.
Grilledcheesecalliope March 26, 2013, 3:28 pm
That is a cool combo. I always get soo jealous of other people’s awesome multicultural-ness.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:36 pm
Also I think it’s a little silly to think that everyone should just be born thinking that gay marriage is a great thing. I mean think about your grandparents. They would have been born in 1930-ish. I don’t think it makes them terrible people if they’re a little wary of the whole institution of marriage changing. When they were young being gay wasn’t even a thing. People just weren’t. It wouldn’t have even crossed their minds to have an opinion on it because the problem didn’t even exist. I hope that over time they would see that it’s the fair and just way, but I would love to see the older generation’s thought process on it. To say that people lack compassion for not being on board I think is a little short sighted and frankly a simplistic argument. It devalues just how far we’ve come as a society. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Being gay is not like being black. Being gay is a feeling (yes one I think you can’t help and that you don’t choose to be gay) but none the less it is much different than race that everyone can see.
It seems like everything in our society is so poloarized, and honestly I blame a lot of that on the internet. I don’t think prior generations had nearly the amount of bullying kids go through nowadays. For example I don’t think bullying was ever as extreme and I also don’t think the reaction to bullying (suicide) was ever as extreme. I mean just on my newsfeed today there’s been a lot about marriage equality, a lot about gun control, and a lot about gun manufacturers refusing to sell ammunition to the NYPD. We are constantly inundated with differing opinions. Frankly it’s fascinating for me to watch. It is so hard to put people in categories. I’m a socially liberal republican. There are people on my newsfeed that are promoting marriage equality and gun rights (a republican-ish thing) in the same day.
In summary, these are weird times y’all, and I want to take a sociology class again soon. People are fascinating.
Addie Pray March 26, 2013, 2:40 pm
I mean, I’ll take what I can get! And if a Republican senator’s son being gay is what pushes him to support gay marriage, great. But… it’s just annoying. I hate how selfish people are.
Elle March 26, 2013, 2:42 pm
“When they were young being gay wasn’t even a thing. People just weren’t.”
Yes, they were. In the closet.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:45 pm
Well yeah but I mean people weren’t walking around being gay. So there was nothing to think about. Unless YOU (hypothetical you) were gay, it wouldn’t cross your mind that it was possible to have sexual feelings for a member of the same sex because it wasn’t discussed. So they’ve had 60 years of thinking one way and the last 20ish of trying to think another way. Imagine living 60 years and then BAM – turns out there’s two choices in who you can love. Tell me that’s not mind blowing.
theattack March 26, 2013, 2:47 pm
That is a really hard concept to grasp for older people, I think. That was illustrated to me this weekend when my grandfather suggested the government created gay people during the Clinton administration. haha He’s pretty out of touch with reality though.
iwannatalktosampson March 26, 2013, 2:54 pm
Ha see I would love to talk to your grandpa about it.
bittergaymark March 27, 2013, 1:03 am
Reagan with his bad dye job brought about the creation of gays as nobody ever wanted such an absurd looking President.
oldie March 26, 2013, 4:41 pm
Of course they were. There were ‘confirmed bachelor’ uncles and ‘maiden aunts’ that everyone in the family knew were gay. How with it did one need to be to know that Liberace was gay? The difference in the past was that gays, and people in general, didn’t vocally complain when gays were legally discriminated against. That was a time when blacks, Hispanics, and women were also very discriminated against — legally as well as by private actors. Our grandparents, well your grandparents and my parents, may have gone along to get along, but one would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid not to know that their was massive injustice and discrimination in this nation in the 1940s and 1950s. The history of this country since the mid-50s has really been a struggle between those wanting to end the discrimination and those wanting to continue it.
oldie March 26, 2013, 6:40 pm
Well, I’ve lived almost 66 years and can assure that in my youth we knew about and talked about gays. Some of the talk was high level. Much was not — gay slurs aimed at boys not deemed sufficiently typical in their gender views or the less attractive girls who didn’t date. We also knew about same-sex child molestation. Certainly by the time we were in high school, at least, most of us knew at least one adult who was gay. We all knew that my HS English teacher was a lesbian. Her partner also taught at our school. I’m referring to growing up in a small city in the early 1960s, but I doubt things were all that different elsewhere.
GatorGirl March 26, 2013, 3:00 pm
They were surely in the closet but “homosexuality” was listed as a mental illness until 1974 in the Diagnostic Standards Manual. So it’s only been 40ish years since being gay wasn’t recognized as an illness anymore. No wonder people hid or denied their sexuality for so many years.
Progress is slow but thankfully things are starting to change.
FireStar March 26, 2013, 4:05 pm
Actually when I talk to the “older” generation – they have no issue. They have a live and let live philosophy. They may not understand the “gays” and some haven’t been sure what is the right term to use to refer to them as…but they have no problem with them having the same rights as everyone else. And this is in my own fairly conservative culture when it comes to homosexuality. Even in that CNN article about the county where no gay people live, the older lady loved her some Ellen. I think the problem is actually with a younger generation than those born in our grandparent’s time. I have a lot flex when it comes to adjusting to change – but how long does one person need? And how long do you need before the change you are adjusting to is to remove barriers of discrimination? Unfortunately hate is not something that can be cloaked in the guise of people just being ignorant or it being a generational thing. The crimes committed against marginalized groups aren’t committed by geriatrics. It is a whole set of young people that, with all available evidence to the contrary, choose to discriminate and to hate because they want to – not because they don’t know any better.
oldie March 26, 2013, 4:45 pm
This is backwards. Every poll shows that opposition to gay marriage and gay rights has been pretty much confined to the over-65s in terms of age grouping where the majority are still opposed. The youngest age groups are the most supportive of gay rights.
Temperance March 26, 2013, 10:25 pm
I was raised to be against gay marriage, lol. Not that this is what you’re asking for, but when I was like 12 I was against it because I thought that it would bring about the End Times.
landygirl March 26, 2013, 1:12 pm
Prop. 8 should have never passed in the first place. Too much outside influence from religious groups with money to burn. I’m ashamed of my fellow Californians for passing such a discriminitory law.
sarita_f March 26, 2013, 1:38 pm
I just wish we could do away with governmentally-sanctioned “marriage” in general, since I see it as a religious institution. And I don’t like government & religion mixing. I’m all for everyone committing to whoever they want to commit to. Put it down in writing somewhere, sign contracts, legally designate people as your next of kin, whatever. Have a ceremony wherever you want to in order to satisfy your religious convictions and/or cultural traditions. Or don’t have a ceremony at all. I have some dear friends that if I were ever in hospital would absolutely want them to be able to visit and it would be nice to designate them as people special to me even though I never want to boink them or even live with them.
At any rate, we have to work with what we’ve got and I truly believe this is a fundamentally human rights issue and I hope the Supreme Court does the right thing.
FireStar March 26, 2013, 2:22 pm
Marriage doesn’t have to do anything with religion. Many don’t. But since there are legal ramifications for marrying – let it be for everyone. And if certain faiths don’t want to conduct the ceremonies in their churches or temples then that is their purview… but don’t deny the legality of the institution to consenting adults. The argument banning it has always been weak to me since there is a separation of church and state…allegedly.
bethany March 26, 2013, 2:40 pm
I’m of the opinion that a legal marriage and a religious marriage should be totally separate things. I think anyone should be allowed to get married in the eyes of the law, and religious groups can have their own rules about who can be married in that religion.
Grilledcheesecalliope March 26, 2013, 3:35 pm
Exactly, I think thats the best solution.
oldie March 26, 2013, 5:02 pm
Actually, they are legally separate things. Many of our denominations just want to have the government enforce their interpretation of marriage. I know many legally married Catholics who were divorced from a prior spouse, never got an indulgence, and are not married (in a religious sense) in the eys of the Catholic Church. A church can perform a not-legally-binding and conferring-no-legal-rights marriage ceremony if it so chooses. Participants in such services can call each other husband and wife, wear rings, treat themselves as a married couple. Common-law marriage, in which (admittedly) one man and one woman on their own say-so held themselves out to be married and presented themselves as such to the world, were after the passage of time deemed legally binding. Many states have changed this.
Temperance March 26, 2013, 10:31 pm
That’s how it works now, and I totally approve of it! I have a friend who was considered to be “dating” his wife in the eyes of the Catholic Church until the had their Catholic ceremony, lol.
Temperance March 26, 2013, 10:29 pm
Sorry, but no. I’m not giving up my marriage to the Christians. I’m an atheist and I love my husband, enjoy being married, and believe in marriage SO MUCH that I want all couples to have it, as well as the numerous social and legal benefits it brings.
My marriage is more than a contract, thanks.
Lydia March 27, 2013, 7:27 am
WTS.