Praise jesus

Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight OOOOOOHHH get down tonight!

Seriously, it is thrilling to witness this stuff. So excited and pleased for my LGBT friends - for everybody. A sickening chapter in our history gone and dead.

I am crying the biggest happy tears right now. It's fitting that the first person I found out from was my hero, Dan Savage.

That you, troll. You're right - it is awesome!

WOW!

Now that you people have destroyed marriage, you can get back to your true mission of destroying the American farmer by refusing to eat any carbs.

In seriousness, it's about damn time. I'm glad most of SCOTUS got its head out of its own ass. Roberts is still a dick though.

Now if only Scalia would just shut up, we could hear the prop 8 ruling.

SCOTUSBlog points out that Robert's dissent includes a line about the Court lacking jurisdiction in Hollingsworth.

"...we hold today that we lack jurisdiction to consider [challenges to state marriage definitions] in the particular context of Hollingsworth v. Perry." (last page of Roberts' dissent)

Great! Now we're less bigoted, still sick and stupid. Maybe get to work on the latter two soon?

Yaaayyyyy!!!!

This seemed to be what most court watchers predicted, so not a huge surprise. But a big relief nevertheless.

Awesome! Suck it, Seattleblues!

So what happens if a couple gets married in California and then moves to Texas? Are they divorced once they become residents? Or does Texas have to recognize out of state marriages just like everybody else? The latter would be sort of good while the former would be an abomination.

@15 Gomorrah is a happy, lovely town. I am a delighted resident. Feel free to visit, but if you bring fire raining down on us, you'll have to leave and you won't be invited back.

The party tonight will be wonderful.

16: the reasoning in Windsor implies that the state mini-DOMAs will soon be struck down. The SCOTUS appears to have defined a new standard of review "careful scrutiny" that will strike down laws against LGBT that are motivated by animus

@16 @17 But they would still be married in the eyes of the federal government and receive federal benefits no matter what ass backward state they live in. And I believe that is how gay marriage is ultimately going to be legalized in all 50 states - by the finding that states, like the federal government, cannot pick and choose which legally sanctioned marriages from other states they wish to recognize.

Yay! This is awesome! Woo-Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't even find my lawyer voice to make reasoned commentary. But that's okay. need to postpone driving to work a few minutes anyway, to let the emotional impact die down.

Dan, when you woke up to tell Terry, did you FF?

The trolls are free to not get gay married, the rest of us will celebrate the fact that WA and CA now treat people as people.

@16, "Full faith and credit" will probably be the next issue before the court.

@20: What about the Full Faith and Credit clause?

Anyways it strikes me as odd that there would be a difference between federal marriage and state marriage when the federal government doesn't certify marriages. You could really get into a no-mans-land here. What if you are a soldier stationed in a gay hatetropolis. Does the State have to recognize your marriage since you are not a resident? Could they still fuck you over on hospital visitation and adoption? And what if you want a divorce but now live in the hatetropolis. Since the State doesn't consider you married, can they divorce you? Could your previous State of which you are no longer a resident do so? Could the federal government do so?

The current situation is untenable. The Supreme Court was stupid in not striking down the laws. Now people are going to get screwed for years and the courts are going to be clogged with complaints like it was with interracial marriages until the Supreme Court got off of their ass and fixed it.

The state-by-state patchwork is legally untenable. The idea of states not recognizing each other's marriages goes so blatantly against the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, it's a no-brainer that legal challenges will arise. The obvious, inevitable solution here is a blanket legalization à la Loving v. Virginia, but Roberts and Scalia were never going to allow that on their watch. But it's the only way this can end.

#4 sick bigot
#9 snide bigot
#15 apocalyptic fear
#17 desperate bigot
#22 vengeful bigot
sneer, sneer sneer!

@16, as others have said, they will be Federally Married, but TX won't recognize it. Last I checked there was a case in TX in which two women were being denied a divorce in TX, because...well its fucking Texas.

Side note: a friend of mine [mtf] was legally married--as a woman--to her wife in Texas after officially having her gender changed....

Congratulations, Dan. This beautiful day is in no small part thanks to you and everything you've done for marriage equality. Crying tears of joy, and hoping you, Terry & DJ celebrate like hell tonight.

@26 The full faith and credit clause is exactly what I was referring to, just not by name. That is the only way we're going to get gay marriage in all 50 states anytime soon - and I think it will be soon.

"Dissents," not "descents," Dan. You are now free to move about the cabin...

Shorter Hanna Rosin: `Yay! Now that gay marriage has been legal for five fucking minutes I can start complaining about how gay men morally suck as much as straight men! Hooray!'
http://tinyurl.com/pr7cogy

@19: I'll have to look at that. It sounds like a promising precedent.

I seriously think you're right! Gay marriage should be legal! Yeah!

What's the fastest way to chill this champagne? Freezer or bucket of ice?

Can one of you lawyer-types (or law/SCOTUS nerds - much love) help me out? So does the prop 8 decision basically bring things back to square one as far as the states go, but with the important change that non-state-government parties can no longer challenge a lawsuit filed against state anti-SSM laws? On any basis?

If that's right, that's a pretty significant step. All it will take is for a state governor to get on board with SSM, right? Then the plaintiff in a state SSM-ban challenge is bound to win?

@37 My understanding is that a non-state party would not have standing to defend state law in *federal* court. But like in the case of Prop 8, they could defend the law in state court. And to say the plaintiff would be "bound to win" presupposes that the state court of any given state would side with the plaintiff. It is also true that a non-state party could appeal/defend state law in federal court if they can show that they are tangibly harmed by the enforcement or lack of enforcement of that law.

37: I'm guessing the Imperial County clerk will challenge whether they are required to implement Judge Walker's district court ruling, to promptly be slapped down by the Gov/AG.

36:

Definitely the bucket of ice, if for no other reason than you don't want to end up with champagne slushies by leaving it in the freezer too long.

@31, 26, 19 et al. Much as I would like to agree with you that this is a step towards marriage equality in all 50 states, Kennedy's opinion doesn't really support that conclusion. His focus is on the longstanding rights of states to govern domestic relations and define marriage. The times he points to Loving v. Virginia, it is to make it clear that the marriage equality issue is not one that he sees as being appropriate for federal intervention.

Since states are not obligated to give full faith and credit to the laws and actions of other states that violate public policy, and each state is allowed to define its own public policy regarding marriage, full faith and credit will not be an answer.

Nor is Kennedy prepared to talk about equal protection for homosexual people as a group in his opinion. He makes it quite clear that the group that he believes is being denied equal protection is a group that consists of "legally married homosexual couples." So nothing in this decision appears to foreshadow a ruling that homosexuals have a federal constitutional right to marry in all state.

Sorry to be a buzz kill. Today's ruling is a really good thing. Let the celebrations continue.

@19 correction: "careful consideration", not "careful scrutiny."

It will require a separate legal challenge to get the Feds to recognize CUs/DPs but there is no longer any basis for the Feds to ignore them. In fact Obama could make a legal challenge unnecessary with an executive order for all Federal agencies to recognize "everything but marriage" CUs/DPs.

@36 bucket of salted ice is the fastest way to move heat out of the bottle of champagne. Enjoy.

41: but in "everything but marriage" CUs/DPs the sole difference is supposed to be the word "marriage" and nothing else. Hard to justify why the Feds would continue to withhold benefits from CUs/DPs when the states have recognized these as legal. What conceivable basis could the Feds use that could survive a legal challenge?

Not trying to be funny but does this mean same sex marriage is now recognized as valid by the Federal gov or does this clear the way to make that happen?

:-) !!!!

41: agree that FFC is not going to help. The mini-DOMAs will have to be challenged on the basis of this new standard of scrutiny, ie that they were enacted on the basis of animus and nothing else.

To all those saying the USSC was 'stupid' to not strike down all sections of DOMA and all the Little DOMAs--they only decide on the issues before them, and not always on those.

Today's rulings pave the way for people like me (married in WA state, live in OR) to sue my home state. Those suits are now a likely win.

#27, Loving vs Virginia had nothing to do with the Full Faith and Credit clause; rather it was on the basis of Freedom of Association. Full Faith and Credit has NEVER been applied to marriage laws, and states banning interracial marriage were never required to recognize interracial marriages performed in other states: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/us/ban…

That's not to say what you predict won't happen - Probably Soto, Ginsberg, Bryer and Kagan would go along with it. So its pretty much down to Kennedy (as usual).

Applause applause!

It appears that marriage has been properly defended at this point...

I live just outside of San Francisco, and this weekend's Pride celebration is going to be extra-celebratory! Congratulations to all my friends who have waited so long for their marriages to be legal!

All the haters can suck my dick.
(No homo.)

@ 49 But again, Kennedy is not saying that homosexual persons are entitled to protection from state laws that evidence animus toward homosexuals. He is saying that "legally married homosexual couples" are entitled to protection from a federal law that reflects animus toward that legally established marital union.

Kennedy has made this an issue of states' rights. And unlike Scalia or Alito, I think he's being intellectually honest and believes it is an issue of states' rights. I think he's wrong, and that the Court should have protected the right of all persons to marry, based on equal protection, or freedom of association, or the penumbra of the unenumerated substantive due process rights, or whatever. But nobody thought for a second that Kennedy would go for that (I think the other four members of today's majority would). At least Kennedy seems to be sincere and to be trying to work through this stuff, and today's decision was a step forward rather than a step back.

Dan,

Correction to your UPDATE2: It's the PROponents of Prop 8 who did not have standing to appeal the District Court ruling. The opponents of Prop 8 are the ones who won in District Court and very much had/have standing, as they're the ones harmed by the stupid law.

Shorter: proponents of Prop 8 can go suck it.

Awwww... I feel bad for the troll! Also, @45, how in fuck does salting the ice aid in cooling a bottle of drink?

57: but in Romer he did. I disagree that it's solely a matter of state's rights - Kennedy has also said, in this opinion and Romer - that laws against LGBT that are motivated solely by animus are unconstitutional. It will require more court challenges to get rid of the mini-DOMAs, but this decision is yet another step in doing that.

@59: I'm glad you asked that...
When you add a non-volatile solute to a liquid, you stabilize the liquid phase (solute-solvent interactions lower the energy of the system), causing evaporation and freezing to be thermodynamically less favorable. This causes the liquid to freeze at a lower temperature and boil at a higher temperature. Thus, a bucket of salted ice water may be mostly liquid at -5 °C, while a bucket of pure water will begin to freeze at 0 °C and will be entirely solid at five below.
This effect is also why you salt water that you want to boil things in; since the water will then boil at a higher temperature, whatever's in it will be heated further and cook faster.

@59: Salt lowers the freezing point of water. This melts the ice and causes a phase transformation. The phase transformation is an extremely endothermic process (the ice has to take energy from the water to go from a solid to a liquid), so it will significantly drop the temperature of the salty water.

@59 Salt lowers the freezing temperature of H2O. So if you salted ice, you could have water at a temperature lower than 30 degrees. A water bath gives more surface contact than ice cubes, more surface contact leads to more impact on the item you're trying to cool. So, salted ice would cool something much faster than plain ice in a bucket or a stint in the freezer.

I know that there are more sciency-minded folks out here in Slogland who could explain it more succinctly, but that's the second-grader level of scientific explanation.

RE: @63 - "I know that there are more sciency-minded folks out here in Slogland"

Folks like Venomlash (duuuuude) and delirian. Thanks, folks.

Oh Happy Day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLocKzC80…

@51 thanks for posting that
@56 that's a very optimistic view of US history
@65 thanks for posting that! Beautiful song for a beautiful day!

FUCK YEAH!!!!!

Hee hee! It's funny because SeattleBlueBalls is still writing in the imaginary first personal plural as if he has a legion of admirers and followers. And also because he still thinks people give a shit what he whines about.

Congratulations, Dan -- married in Canada, married in Washington, and now married in the eyes of the Federal government. Or, more simply, "married." No more qualifiers needed. Congratulations to you, your family, and all of us.

If the Feds drag their heels recognizing CUs/DPs, we will need a 2x2 table to show how complex things are becoming.

1. Places like Oregon, where the state recognizes you as effectively married but the Feds do not.
2. Places like Massachusetts, where both the state and the Feds recognize your marriage.
3. You could get legally married then move someplace like Texas, where the Feds would consider you married (for some purposes) but the state won't.
4. Or you could just stay in Texas and be SOL on both counts.

Did I get that right?

Mr Seeker - I don't think anybody here wants me to get started on Ms Rosin.

"The dirty little secret about gay marriage:"

Those. Exact. Words. Open. Her. Article.

I hope Ms Eirene will not attempt to defend her. As much as I respect those feminists who have subverted Mr Reagan's Eleventh Commandment by never speaking ill of another feminist, Ms Rosin has gone beyond the Pale so often that she gets a discounted fare on the ferry. (And yet I do not attempt to irritate others by putting her husband into their box, the way so many people do with Mr Bachmann.)

@72, Her piece is bizarre. It's not as if straights needed gays to show them how to have extra-marital sex. And she dismisses completely the idea that any straights might be interested in ethical extra-marital sex.

DOMA is Dead: Long live the real Defense of Marriage.

Today the LGBT community and our friends and political allies rejoice. We rejoice and celebrate ourselves because five out of nine of the Supremes have seen fit to sing a new legal chart busting hit in their just released opinion, United States v. Windsor. This opinion declares as null and void the false definition of marriage foisted on the people of these United States by that now infamous and highly injurious piece of legislation wrongly named, the Defense of Marriage Act, Public Law 104–199 passed by104th Congress in 1996. We, LGBT Americans, are no longer defined as second class citizens unworthy of equal protection under law. Rather, this decision insists:

DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

This opinion states the obvious truth, DOMA sought “to disparage and injure” LGBT people in their “personhood and dignity,” and in so doing was in clear violation of equal protection clause established by the Fifth Amendment. For this the Gay and Lesbian community says, “thank you,” but also, “it’s about time!”

When one thinks back over the history of this hateful and unconstitutional “Act,” the thoughtful person cannot help but find a real and darkly humorous side to all of these proceedings. This law was, after all, championed and signed into law by such notorious heterosexual philanderers (adulterers) as Newt Gingrich and the, then President, soon to be impeached for the ridiculous Monica Lewinski scandal, Bill Clinton. All previously existing marriage law already protected the “sacred” institution from the type of assault that these men perpetrated by their actions but still they persisted, hypocritically, to find a threat that represented some kind of greater, more numinous assault on the institution for which their private actions demonstrated a complete disregard. Bill Clinton’s signing into law this heinous act represented the single, most reprehensible deed of political expediency and cowardice of conscience that he committed while holding the highest office in the land. These realities when coupled with the fact that the man who wrote the majority opinion finding DOMA unconstitutional was appointed to that distinguished body of jurists by the LGBT community’s ancient enemy, Ronald Reagan, who had sought to exterminate us, LGBT citizens. through his administration’s inaction during the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, clearly demonstrates that history does sometimes take a deeply ironic, perhaps profoundly perverse, course of its own.

Yes, today’s decision does much for the LBGT community but certainly it does not provide a statement that recognizes us as completely equal citizens of this great land. It only finds that when individual states seek to guarantee our rights as fully protected citizens, do we merit the full protections afforded other, heterosexual citizen. While this decision does much to move the LBGT community’s goal of complete and equal protection under the law forward, countless obstacles remain as we proceed down that road. Thirty-eight states still do not recognize the validity of any same-sex union. LGBT citizens can be discriminated against in housing, employment and educational opportunities and frequently are the victims of such discrimination even in communities that have endeavored to extend these protections to us. This decision gives us hope, it gives us joy but it also highlights the need to continue, to persist in the struggle for the ideal that insists all people are created equal.

Finally, as a vibrant and concise elaboration of our real hope I wish to quote from Justice Kennedy again:
The power the Constitution grants it also restrains. And though Congress has great authority to design laws to fit its own conception of sound national policy, it cannot deny the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

To that I think all can agree without hesitation. Would to God that Tomorrow it is truly so!

Mr. Ven @72:

The not-at-all-actually-hidden secret about straight marriage is that more than half of them fail. And if Rosin feels the need to do some indirect slut-shaming to potential(!) gay married couples-with the conservative definition of marriage as her sticking point- I eagerly await her article on the dirty little problematic ethical nature of straight divorce.

Venomlash @55:

Well played, sir.

Of course I had more cynical friends immediately start pointing out all the things that the striking down of DOMA *doesn't* accomplish. I agree we have a lot of work to do, especially those of us who live ins tates where gay marriage is not yet legally recognized. But geez, let us all enjoy this hopefully significant step forward.

Before I knew what the ruling was, I updated my userpics appropriately, see below. ;)

https://www.facebook.com/eva.hopkins.18/…

Look, Rosin's problem with men isn't that they aren't adequately faithful within their relationships, it's that they are [American] men, and, frankly, they aren't disappearing into complete irrelevance fast enough for her tastes. (Have you ever heard Rosin speak on the topic? Her tone varies from mildly amused to complete indifference to men becoming useless shells or parodies of their former selves.) Her scornful monogamy comment merely encapsulates that the reality that for all the modernity of her areas of interest she has got a pretty damned conservative/traditional condemnatory view of male sexuality: it exists to serve the needs of a traditional male-female economic unit, period. And, since gay sexuality has two men's sexuality and in a gay marriage no woman is being supported you can imagine that she dislikes it twice as much.

DOMA sayonara, Mister Obama.