Holy Cow wears wedding bells!!!!!!!

How very odd that Judge "El Toro" didn't mention the Privileges and Immunities Clause (that's in the unamended text of the Constitution.) Oh, I'm afraid that if this (and it will) be heard by the Supreme Court... it will be overruled on that principle.

I have been a Meet the Press junkie since attending undergraduate school, a little over two decades ago. I became a viewer of the Rachel Maddow Show, a program I had never heard of before a few months ago, when I heard she was having some better coverage of the oil spill we have down here. I was pleasantly surprised to see Rachel on Meet the Press this morning. She has grown in my admiration. I have always had great respect for anyone who can hold their own, on Meet the Press. I was horribly let down in one respect. Of all the important issues covered by Meet the Press, at least as important, but far more important to someone like myself, is the recent legal victory in Massachusetts for gay marriage. As a lesbian, I dreamed since childhood of growing up, and marrying the girl of my dreams. How could you have an openly gay political pundit, like Rachel Maddow, on Meet the Press, and not discuss a constitutional victory for gay marriage!

I also posted this on the Meet the Press site. I am hoping Rachel considers doing a segment on the issue herself. Our stories should not be ignored.

Only to the extent those laws can sustain equal protection challenges. That was the provision used to strike down bans on interracial marriage.

Of course, this is only a district court. We can expect appeals to the Circuit and Supreme Courts before this matter is finally resolved.

'Equal protection' was also the grounds that the Iowa Supreme Court used to legalize marriage. It's a powerful argument.

Not legislative, as if they'd just pass a law. Legal, Massachusetts has legalized same sex marriage, and the ruling is saying that Federal Doma law is violating the state's right, and state's people's right to define marriage as including marriages of same sex couples. In the same way that the federal government unconstitutionally used to define free citizens, as only white males, which excluded slaves, and women from a lot of rights, including owning property, voting etc, etc. So they are saying the Doma Law is unconstitutional. If Doma is unconstitutional in Massachusetts, though, even though other states passed their own Doma laws, and are in agreement with Doma, it shouldn't be hard for private cases to come forward, in other states challenging all the Doma laws, and hopefully going to the Supreme Court. But it should take just one, the one taken up by the Supreme Court. By God don't you get it! When it becomes a Constitutional issue it's the best thing that can happen! Only better thing that could happen is to see it go to the Supreme Court, and wins! When Doma falls by a Constitutional issue, I really don't think any of those other inequalities couldstand. We and our marriages would be protected by the Constitution and they really could not deny us any benefits that were offered other married couples. Only one thing though accidentprone, the current Supreme Court is populated largely by conservative presidential appointees.

Blessings to you Don Quixokie, I DO believe you are right! I hear wedding bells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll wear a dress AND a suit, or maybe just the wedding cake!!!!!!!!!!

Oh who am I kidding, if I ever find her, I'll be too old to marry by the time this is finished in the Supreme Court. But at least it's a start, and at least for the next generation.

Be yourself as publicly as your can be with as many people as you can. Maybe a suit for you and a dress for the man, or maybe a double suit Marlena Deitrich affair. If you go out, take chances and live, then really NOTHING is certain...not even a solitary live.

If our society can learn to embrace all of its memebers, then there may be gay and lesbian retirement centers by the time you get that age. If you've got a partner, no age is too old to get married.

True, no age is too old to marry. But soon I'll be too old to have children. And we'd be two girls, no suited man, unless she's butch?

Sounds good. Maybe you two could be mentors or adopted big sisters? It may never work out quite the way you hope, but no dream needs to go completely unrealized.

Constitution has been there from the beginning, framing our rights. And yet, who is it that decides, who is a human with rights? It is sad that it has to be such a fight just to show others, they are not the only humans in the room. If I see you, why can't you see me?

I'm still thrilled about the possibilities, and I'm a married straight man!

So would LAFWA preclude marriage, or just traditional wedding attire? What would other options be?

I've been with my partner for a long time. I feel like it would be weird to have a wedding as if we only just now became married. I'm proud of our relationship and that we've stayed together through a lot of stuff even with the hurdles of not having a legally recognized relationship.

I'm just so beyond a wedding. We've got a piece of land and we're planning on building a new house on it in 10 years and then we plan on retiring here. So what a legal marriage means to me is security.

I would be perfectly content with a barbecue and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

That is so okay. Just please make sure that you are on eachothers insurance as spouses and stuff. Okay, none of my business, but I'm just saying.

You go Grrrrrl! Well done!

Dungarees, t-shirt, Jack, barbecue, formal, buck naked, I don't care. I'm just HAPPY if the choice is there for all concerned! If only I had a girl, to marry... But then we are not there yet folks. This thing is likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and you know it's still full of Conservative appointees. Just this, it was a clever thing to use the 10th Amendment. Whoever that jurist was, is brilliant. Because it should be harder for a conservative to argue against this use of the 10th amendment. Since it is being used in precisely the same way they are using it, for their causes, like to oppose health care reform! kudos to TRMS for recognizing the importance, and posting these two stories together today.

We're not fighting for the right to have a wedding. We're fighting to have our families recognized by the government...to have our kinship bonds recognized and our contracts honored. It's about being allowed to have the same responsibilities and privileges.

The wedding can be done at any time or not at all. The wedding is a separate thing...a one day ceremony.

I just want people to realize that the love and commitment in my relationship hasn't been less because it hasn't been recognized by the government. Mostly it's just been more financially taxing on an already lower-middle class couple.

I know I sound very unromantic. But marriage really isn't romantic.

I already gave my partner a ring, on bended knee at a ballet...that was performed to the music of the Indigo Girls (during a song called "Least Complicated".) See, that required no law.

Believe me I know what we are fighting for. And you are right, it is far more than just a ceremony.

I congratulate you on your successful marriage Grrrl.

GrrrlRomeo,

My partner and I were married in the "window" in CA on our 21 year anniversary. We both wore shorts! Yes, now what will the Prop 8 trial result be?

pensword, I grew up in in days of voting to abolish gay teachers (prop 6) and Anita Bryant. Never thought I would see this day of relative progress.

I wish you both well, I never wanted a big formal wedding, but I did want the equal legal status. Romance in proposing for GrrrlRomeo, finding a soulmate for pensword, here's to romance and love!

Thank you sandy. I remember Anita Bryant's hate. Those memories are memories of terror. I was probably in Junior High, I think, when those stories hit the news. My family did not know I was gay, of course, because of my family I was even too terrified to admit it to myself. My family would discuss the news, for the most part, they were in agreement. My brother still to this day comments that the best way to deal with gays and lesbians, is with a chainsaw!!! Then there was the young man, a few years ago, who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck. I pray this court victory really is a sign we are moving forward.

Not to be the gray in the silver lining, but I'm mindful of the fact that marriage will not do much for those in states that can still be fired or denied housing because they're gay. I mean, having the choice of being able to get legally married or getting fired isn't exactly a choice.

Even though I live in CA now, I did live in SC for a total of 9 years where finding a safe place to live was an issue.

I just wish people were as enthusiastic about passing ENDA at least.

It makes me sick that I was born and live (be damned if I say "belonged to") in the state that produced both Bryant and Sally Kern.

They, and Tom Coburn and all the members of the Family on C Street in DC, are all focused on the vision of America as Christian Sharia or Christian Taliban Nation. "Christ plus nothing." "Freedom of Religion, Not Freedom From." These are words that are both code for and that typify their thinking. More to the point, they are wrong. They use the language of the Pharisees. Heavy reliance on the Law of Moses, which was the Law that Jesus fufilled and freed us from. For which he was sacrificed on the altar of political expedience. These are the same people doing the same thing now. The ones who want to bring the state under the purview of the church. They desire a return to a simpler time known as the Dark Ages. God save us from the True Believers.

We tried to pass stuff like ENDA here in Louisiana, and I think some of it passed, but it only applied to state jobs. I think though if Supreme Court upholds this ruling on Doma's unconstitutionality, really stuff like ENDA should logically follow. We can only hope.

I was actually there in committee to testify, for one of these ENDA type bills, in hopes it would pass committee and go on to the floor for a vote. People had this bizarre argument about what causes people to be gay, nature or nurture. I've always said, what does it matter? Some certainly come from nature, and others from nurture. What matters is, neither cause-theory excuses the denial of our rights, nor makes us less human.

Could be, I am wondering if they chose the 10th Amendment on purpose. We have a conservative Supreme Court. The conservatives are using the 10th Amendment in precisely the same way for their causes, as it is being used here. It will be harder for them to argue against it, not that they won't try.

I am wondering the same for myself.

You are preaching to the wrong crowd. An insurance company that covers same sex couples offers an incentive to buy from them.

Gay and lesbian couples who have children, have them because they sincerely want them. Not because the children are products of shot-gun weddings, or conceived because the condom broke, or because theythey were too drunk to remember to use protection (or at least not NEARLY as often because of those reasons.) If you think that gays and lesbians are morally incapable of being good parents, then I would remind you that most straight parents aren't capable of being good parents either. EVERY family is disfunctional to one degree or other, some of them terminal and pathologically so. Alot of people are parents who have absolutely no business having children. If you are going argue that homosexuals want to children so they can recruit them into being homosexuals also...that's just way stupid. That overwhelming vast majority of gays and lesbians came from straight households. And in straight households it is far too often that parents molest their own children. To say that gay or lesbian parents would is no argument. Go back to your Fox or 700 Club study group.

Andre:Ah yes another issue gay people raising children just doesn't seem morally correct.

I can't imagine making that judgement myself. If a child comes home from school to a loving couple who feed, nurture, love and take care of her/him what is the moral objection? Is it somehow more morally correct for a child to come home to his mother shooting dope in the kitchen while a father sits on the couch drunk? My point is that one must view parenting skills and the raising of a child on content and how those skills are manifest. Certainly not on the concept that homosexuality may what...rub off on the kid and make them some sort of deviant? That's sad to me...that kind of thinking.

I realize some feel homosexuality is somehow immoral...I guess that's a choice, however I know some far better same sex parents and how those kids are doing as opposed to some pretty funky heterosexual parents and what their children are up to...just my couple of cents.

I think we should email and ask Rachel to do a show, it is a good time to get our cause on the TV screen.

It might seem that way sometimes, but I think that especially when we cannot meet eye to eye on logical grounds, we must fight by other means. We can get some of them through the heart. Show specials on television about loving gay and lesbian couples, and families. Show the country their stories, their fight to be accepted, and provide for, and to protect their families. Show it on television as much as possible, from now and until the fight goes to the Supreme Court. That would be one way to fight this battle. It is important that the story be told, you can email Rachel to ask her to do a whole special. Email other shows, get the story out. Tell people your own story, as much as you can. We could win, if we don't give up.