Having grown up during the era of civil rights protest for racial equality, I see alarming parallels to the current battle for same-sex marriage equality. And, just as the landmark US Supreme Court case of Brown v Board of Education, which mandated school integration, did not result in immediate and peaceful attaining of its goal, the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Obergefell v Hodges, legalizing gay marriage throughout our country has opened the door, but there are many who demonstrate an unwillingness to walk through.
This morning I Googled “defiance of gay marriage” and came up with countless pages of hits. Just the first page makes the point:
- Alabama Chief Justice Urges Defiance of Same-Sex Marriage;
- Huckabee Applauds KY Clerk’s Defiance of Gay Marriage;
- Six Republican presidential candidates back defiance of gay marriage ruling.
I should point out that my comments today are not intended as a Republican bash session. I’m just reporting the results of my search.
I was also led to a New York Times article that was published about a month after the Obergell decision was issued. I was surprised to learn that the infamous protests against gay marriage in Texas, Kentucky and Alabama are not the only story. For instance, as pointed out by the Times article, a local judge in Toledo, Ohio refused to perform a marriage for two women in his court based on his “personal and Christian beliefs.” And, here I thought judges were supposed to determine and enforce the rule of law, not carry out their job based on personal beliefs. Yes, dear Reader, that is sarcasm.
The New York Times editorial draws the same parallel that I made between gay marriage rights and civil rights for black Americans, pointing out that so-called “interracial” marriages were illegal in many states right up to 1967, when the US Supreme Court determined such state laws to be illegal in Loving v Virginia.
If there is a lesson in all this, it is that we Americans apparently lack the ability to think globally. That is, we have an inability to apply the Bill of Rights as a social principal and it appears that many segments of society, or private behaviors, must continually bushwhack the same forest to pave a road towards equality. I am mindful of the observation made by the late Harold Norris in my Criminal Law and Procedure class in law school. Professor Norris pointed out that, while we like to think of ourselves as a nation guided by majority rule, the Bill of Rights actually acts to protect the minority from the majority.
Just as it was an honor to grow up in a home with parents who marched for civil rights, it is an honor to now be positioned, as a family law attorney, to assist same sex couples obtain all of the benefits that accompany marriage in our country, from inheritance to property division to adoption and more. The future is here and sooner or later we will do as we have done with the fight for racial equality – look back and wonder at how close-minded we once were.