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Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005

STEVE BERGSTEIN, our resident civil rights lawyer, has written an excellent article on gay marriage, posted to his Psychsound blog. It's based on the situation in New York State, one of the epicenters of the issue, because in New Paltz last year, a young mayor named Jason West took it upon himself to start issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, and conducting ceremonies. He has been sued, prosecuted criminally, written about worldwide, and been given the folk hero status he clearly deserves.

Steve, who lives in New Paltz, has written about the best thing you're going to read on gay marriage -- not about how freaked out some people feel, giving a voice to those who want to justify their fear and bigotry -- but rather looking at the issue from the clear-sighted perspective of American constitutional law.

He says a recent state appellate court decision on the issue was the result of the cowardly and foggy reasoning of a first year law student, and he proposes that the judges of the court (before whom he appears regularly) must have reading Mad magazine in civics class, because they don't understand the role of the judiciary. Their decision to disallow gay marriage was so poorly substantiated, I could see some of them laughing at that remark.

Gay marriage is a truly important turning point. We don't realize what an historical moment this is, though people rarely do. In a generation or less, it will seem unconscionable that the alleged heterosexual majority sought to keep control over the private relationship choices of other people, just like today it seems unthinkable that as late as 1967, states could ban inter-racial marriages by law. And, shockingly, one of the arguments advanced by the government at that time was maintaining the supposed purity of the races; i.e., the Caucasian race -- an argument the Supreme Court rejected when it struck down laws banning interracial marriages.

Speaking of the Supreme Court.

Of all the issues we need to be watching in the next few months -- and I mean really watching with interest, and calls to our senators -- it is the appointment of the replacement to Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Steve will be keeping us updated on this process. For now, I suggest you check out his interesting and just outrageous enough article on gay marriage, at this link:

http://planetwaves.info/blog2.html