Minnesota Becomes 12th State to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage

Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, becomes the 12th state to interpret the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", to include the right to chose who you love and marry, same-sex inclusive.  Governor Mark Dayton signed the bill into law on the first business day following a 37-30 vote by the state senate in St. Paul late last week.

When it looked like this bill would pass, many citizens from the state and region congregated near the capitol in celebratory anticipation of the law's passage.  Gay marriage activists and constitutional law scholars alike hail what appears to be significant momentum toward the legal recognition of gay marriage as an individual's civil right.

Other supporters lament, however, that it will likely take decades for all the fifty states -or at least most of them- to pass laws similar to the one in St. Paul last week.

This is why all eyes are on Washington, D.C. and our SCOTUS, where release of the much-anticipated opinion in Hollingsworth v Perry is imminent as the High Court's term comes to a close next month.  At least one federal judge here in Detroit, MI has been holding a same-sex marriage case in abeyance until the SCOTUS decides Hollingsworth.

Minnesota, like Michigan, had a state-law ban on gay marriage.  The lake tides have changed, however, in the course of the past year and within the last election-cycle; the state-law ban in Minnesota was overturned and the gay marriage law passed.  We here at the Law Blogger have to wonder if this could have ever happened when Jesse Ventura was the governor...

Michigan, along with California, Hawaii, Colorado, Nevada, and a half-dozen other states, are seen as battleground states on this issue.  We cannot help but notice the high correlation between the passage of this series of states' civil rights laws, and the presence of a Democratic governor.

We will know more about the progression of this civil rights struggle next month after SCOTUS rules.

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Posted in: civil rights,Detroit,gay marriage,Governor Mark Dayton,Jesse Ventura,MN,same-sex marriage,St. Paul

New York Becomes 6th State to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage; California Next?

Albany, New York.  Last night, in a 33-29 vote, the New York Senate passed a same sex marriage bill expected to be signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo.  When this bill is signed by the governor, who lobbied for its passage, New York becomes the sixth state to legalize gay marriage.

A similar bill was defeated in New York in 2009.  The governor's persistent lobbying; some key Republican donors; an essentially absent Catholic Church; and voting senators that had gay family members, all factored into passage of the bill late Friday night.

Meanwhile, on the left coast, the seminal case from California continues its epic journey to the SCOTUS.  Perry vs Brown (formerly known as Perry vs Schwarzenegger) involves California's passage of Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage after it previously passed muster with California voters.  A conservative group sued in federal court; the ban was struck down, and the federal trial court's decision is now on appeal before the Ninth Circuit.

Judge Vaughn Walker, the now-retired federal court judge that initially struck down Proposition 8, publicly came out as a gay man only after his recent retirement.  His ruling was immediately challenged based on grounds of bias, becoming the first judge in history to be challenged for recusal on the basis of sexual orientation.  The chief judge of the federal bench in San Francisco upheld Judge Walker's ruling.

Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Colombia are jurisdictions that all have previously legalized same sex marriage.

This has become the civil rights issue of our time.

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Posted in: California,civil rights,gay marriage,Judge Vaughn Walker,New York,Perry v Brown,same-sex marriage,SCOTUS