Connecticut gets with the times, legalizes same-sex marriage

Yesterday was a good day to be a Connecticut resident as our state supreme court stood up against bigotry. From Daniela Altimari's report for the Hartford Courant:

The state Supreme Court on Friday delivered gay and lesbian couples the validation they have long been seeking — the right to marry.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that same-sex couples cannot be prevented from marrying — and that civil unions, those marriage-like legal arrangements that Connecticut has offered to gay people since 2005, are not an acceptable substitute.

"Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the ... same-sex partner of their choice," Justice Richard Palmer wrote. "To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others."

The 85-page ruling means that thousands of gay couples soon will be able to marry in Connecticut, perhaps as early as next month. It also provides fresh fuel to opponents of same-sex marriage, who are pushing for a mechanism that would permit them to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex unions.

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UPDATE: That last sentence quoted above is kind of scary. I just emailed State Senator Andrew Roraback and urged him to oppose any such "mechanism." Yea for me, huh?

Anniversary Post

Much thunder and lightning here in the hills of western CT the past two days. It's keeping me off the computer pretty much. Today KC and I celebrate our first anniversary: neither of us would have remembered it if not for our relatives. We will celebrate it today by having brunch out tomorrow. We traveled to Vermont to get hitched because there, at least, any two adults can have the same legal rights regardless of whether they happen to be the same sex or not. This was just before gay marriage became (suddenly) a national issue, and before, I admit, it occurred to me that merely achieving the same legal rights, via "civil union," might not be enough. Although, such legal rights are really the main reason we got married anyway. In fact, civil unions are all that should be recognized by the government. Let marriage be a religious designation which the various churches can knock themselves out over if they want. I hadn't seen this view expressed anywhere, but it has started to appear in recent months. For instance, Ellen Willis contributed this piece to The Nation's symposium on the marriage issue. Here comes the rain again.