I started watching the John Adams mini-series by HBO in the mornings, while I exercise (I know it doesn't look like I exercise, but I try), and the opening segment deals with a young British Captain in British-occupied Boston who is accused of ordering his men of firing into a large raucous crowd without cause. Captain Preston is described as the most despised man in all of Massachusetts, with little chance for a fair trial from a Boston jury. John Adams agrees to take the case, when no one else would, despite the unpopular position he would be taking and despite the risk to his own practice. During the trial he would stubbornly work to present the facts, and when it was over, his client was judged to be innocent. Mr. Adams had defended the individual rights of a man who was a member of a very disrespected minority group in Boston, a British soldier. He had argued against the grain and sentiment of his own friends and neighbors, and a jury of his client's piers had agreed with him.
Fast forward to November 2003, and seemingly out of the blue, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court by the slim vote of 4 to3, declared that laws prohibiting gay marriage were not in alignment with the state's constitution. At the time of the vote only 50% of the state was in support of the judgment and at the national level, support was overwhelmingly against it. The backlash that ensued was fierce. Within the state, a large effort was underway to get the state legislature to write a new law which affirmed the fact that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. The Archdiocese of Boston began using its own funds to promote this new law, an unusual move really, but they must have thought that they needed to end this abomination, before it ever got started, In the end, the state legislature decided not to move forward with a new law and so the judicial decision held. Gay marriage was legal in the great state of Massachusetts in May 2004. The rest of the country would get there too, they just didn't know it at the time
In the immediacy of the ruling, the push against the activist judiciary in Massachusetts was swift and harsh. By November of that same year, eleven states would pass constitutional amendments defining marriage as being between a man and a woman only: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah.
Supporters of gay marriage who had been so emboldened by events in Massachusetts had come to realize that many battles remained. On November 4, 2008, four years after the Massachusetts ruling, voters in California (that's right, liberal California) approved Proposition 8, which would amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And around the same time, voters in Arizona and Florida would approve similar amendments to their state constitutions.
But still, the tide was beginning to turn, at first it was slow, incremental, but it would pick up speed
One week after the vote in California, gay marriage would become legal in Connecticut, the result of a ruling from its highest court, and on April 7, 2009 Vermont became the first state to legalize gay marriage through legislation, after they overturned the veto by Republican Governor Jim Douglass. Over the next month and half, three more states would fall in line: Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine. Three more years would pass, with gay rights advocates making gains at the state level, but it was a always a case of two steps forward, one step back. In February 2012 Republican Governor Chris Christie would veto a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Three months later President Barack Obama would endorse same-sex marriage in an interview aired on ABC news. It was the first such statement of support by a sitting president. On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court would reject parts of the the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law in 1996 under President Bill Clinton, ruling that same sex spouses legally married in state could receive federal benefits. Exactly two years later to the day, on June 26, 2015, almost 12 years after the ground breaking decision in Massachusetts, the US Supreme Could would rule, again by the slim vote in a 5-4 ruling, that same-sex couples could marry nationwide. It was now official, the tide had turned, permanently
While all this was going on in the rest of the country, in Massachusetts the ruling and subsequent challenges faded into the background. Life resumed a normal pace. The institution of heterosexual marriage did not collapse, and the sky did not fall. The sun rose in the morning and set at night. Despite the dire warnings from certain religious groups, this little experiment in Massachusetts had proven that opposition to gay marriage was much to do about nothing.. A bold move by the state's highest judicial body had led to the affirmation of equal rights for a minority group who just wanted to be treated, like everyone else. By the slim majority of a 4-3 vote, the Court had declared a wrong and tried to right it. They had led the way and the country would be infinitely better for it.
John Adams would have approved.
I have always been a supporter of gay rights for as long as I can remember, although it really crystallized for me when I heard a friend's story of a family member who was.....disenfranchised by others who held strong religious beliefs, But for those that don't know, in the interest of full disclosure, and as the old expression goes, I have a horse in this horse race. In January 2004, my son told my wife, my daughter and me that he was gay. It was one month before his 18th birthday, and two months after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's important decision. Now, its very easy for me to tell you, that I love my son unequivocally. The words, if spoken, would just roll off my tongue. Oh, don't get me wrong, he and I have our disagreements, like any father and son, but being gay isn't one of them. So everything I say on the topic of gay marriage, whether it's today or some day in the future, must be viewed through a prism which says I am clearly biased, because I am.
________________________________________
This single issue in my life does represent the first of several reasons for the shift in my thinking, from leaning Right to leaning Left. Generally speaking many, many more Democrats have made the shift over the last 15 years to support all aspects of gay rights, specifically gay marriage. This is not to say that Democrats have always been advocates of gay marriage. As I stated earlier, Bill Clinton signed DOMA back in 1996, and Barack Obama did not announce his out right support until May 2012, but they get all the credit, in my world anyway, for getting there first. This is a race they should be proud that they won. And sadly, many Republicans have been very slow to evolve on this issue, their feet still stuck in the mud. Let me offer three very specific, very important relatively recent examples to make my point.
Fast forward to November 2003, and seemingly out of the blue, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court by the slim vote of 4 to3, declared that laws prohibiting gay marriage were not in alignment with the state's constitution. At the time of the vote only 50% of the state was in support of the judgment and at the national level, support was overwhelmingly against it. The backlash that ensued was fierce. Within the state, a large effort was underway to get the state legislature to write a new law which affirmed the fact that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. The Archdiocese of Boston began using its own funds to promote this new law, an unusual move really, but they must have thought that they needed to end this abomination, before it ever got started, In the end, the state legislature decided not to move forward with a new law and so the judicial decision held. Gay marriage was legal in the great state of Massachusetts in May 2004. The rest of the country would get there too, they just didn't know it at the time
In the immediacy of the ruling, the push against the activist judiciary in Massachusetts was swift and harsh. By November of that same year, eleven states would pass constitutional amendments defining marriage as being between a man and a woman only: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah.
Supporters of gay marriage who had been so emboldened by events in Massachusetts had come to realize that many battles remained. On November 4, 2008, four years after the Massachusetts ruling, voters in California (that's right, liberal California) approved Proposition 8, which would amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And around the same time, voters in Arizona and Florida would approve similar amendments to their state constitutions.
But still, the tide was beginning to turn, at first it was slow, incremental, but it would pick up speed
One week after the vote in California, gay marriage would become legal in Connecticut, the result of a ruling from its highest court, and on April 7, 2009 Vermont became the first state to legalize gay marriage through legislation, after they overturned the veto by Republican Governor Jim Douglass. Over the next month and half, three more states would fall in line: Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine. Three more years would pass, with gay rights advocates making gains at the state level, but it was a always a case of two steps forward, one step back. In February 2012 Republican Governor Chris Christie would veto a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Three months later President Barack Obama would endorse same-sex marriage in an interview aired on ABC news. It was the first such statement of support by a sitting president. On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court would reject parts of the the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law in 1996 under President Bill Clinton, ruling that same sex spouses legally married in state could receive federal benefits. Exactly two years later to the day, on June 26, 2015, almost 12 years after the ground breaking decision in Massachusetts, the US Supreme Could would rule, again by the slim vote in a 5-4 ruling, that same-sex couples could marry nationwide. It was now official, the tide had turned, permanently
While all this was going on in the rest of the country, in Massachusetts the ruling and subsequent challenges faded into the background. Life resumed a normal pace. The institution of heterosexual marriage did not collapse, and the sky did not fall. The sun rose in the morning and set at night. Despite the dire warnings from certain religious groups, this little experiment in Massachusetts had proven that opposition to gay marriage was much to do about nothing.. A bold move by the state's highest judicial body had led to the affirmation of equal rights for a minority group who just wanted to be treated, like everyone else. By the slim majority of a 4-3 vote, the Court had declared a wrong and tried to right it. They had led the way and the country would be infinitely better for it.
John Adams would have approved.
I have always been a supporter of gay rights for as long as I can remember, although it really crystallized for me when I heard a friend's story of a family member who was.....disenfranchised by others who held strong religious beliefs, But for those that don't know, in the interest of full disclosure, and as the old expression goes, I have a horse in this horse race. In January 2004, my son told my wife, my daughter and me that he was gay. It was one month before his 18th birthday, and two months after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's important decision. Now, its very easy for me to tell you, that I love my son unequivocally. The words, if spoken, would just roll off my tongue. Oh, don't get me wrong, he and I have our disagreements, like any father and son, but being gay isn't one of them. So everything I say on the topic of gay marriage, whether it's today or some day in the future, must be viewed through a prism which says I am clearly biased, because I am.
________________________________________
This single issue in my life does represent the first of several reasons for the shift in my thinking, from leaning Right to leaning Left. Generally speaking many, many more Democrats have made the shift over the last 15 years to support all aspects of gay rights, specifically gay marriage. This is not to say that Democrats have always been advocates of gay marriage. As I stated earlier, Bill Clinton signed DOMA back in 1996, and Barack Obama did not announce his out right support until May 2012, but they get all the credit, in my world anyway, for getting there first. This is a race they should be proud that they won. And sadly, many Republicans have been very slow to evolve on this issue, their feet still stuck in the mud. Let me offer three very specific, very important relatively recent examples to make my point.
- In the fall of 2012, if you went to web site of then Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, you would have read the following: Marriage is... critical for the well-being of a civilization. That is why it is so important to preserve traditional marriage – the joining together of one man and one woman. As president, Mitt will not only appoint an Attorney General who will defend the Defense of Marriage Act but he will also champion a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I think Mr. Romney is a good person, He was governor here in Massachusetts several years back, but he lost his bid to unseat Barrack Obama, so thankfully, he never got the chance to champion an amendment to the Constitution, which I would strongly argue, is absolutely discriminatory. And while I can't prove that his position on this Marriage Amendment was even partially responsible for his loss, selfishly, I would like to think so.
- In a March 12, 2015 on the topic of same-sex marriage, Christian Today wrote: Last month, Ted Cruz reintroduced the State Marriage Defense Act, which would allow states to enforce their own definition of marriage. "I support traditional marriage and we should reject attempts by the Obama administration to force same-sex marriage on all 50 states," Cruz said in a statement."The State Marriage Defense Act helps safeguard the ability of states to preserve traditional marriage for their citizens." If memory serves me correctly, Ted came in second to his party's eventual nominee in the 2016 Presidential race, a guy who called him "Lying Ted" throughout the primaries. And I would be lying, if I said...that his loss didn't bring a small smile to my face.
- Lastly, lets hear the thinking of our current Vice President, Mike Pence.
- As reported in Time Magazine - In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the 100 most-conservative House members, Pence rose in support of a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Pence called being gay a choice and said keeping gays from marrying was not discrimination, but an enforcement of "God's idea."
- I want to be very respectful of any one's belief in their own God and in their own religion. One of the founding principals of our country is religious freedom, and if someone tells me because of their religious beliefs that they disapprove of gays, I will not attempt to engage in debate, they have their right to their opinion, But in setting laws, they don't have the right to impair the rights of any gays or impair the rights of my son, even in the name of religious freedom.. As I said, I am biased. So, know I need to be respectful here, I think I need to give Mr. Pence some leeway. After all, these comments were over ten years ago, when the concept of gay marriage was still a foreign one to a large majority of the country. But times have changed, and now-a-days, those changes occur at accelerated rates. A Gallup poll in May 2016 found that 61% of Americans supported same-sex marriage. Even more telling, 70% of all millennials supported it. Surely this significant, almost seismic, shift in public opinion over a relatively short period of time would have some impact on Mr. Pence's thoughts on the matter, maybe.
- Or maybe not, then Governor Mike Pence first burst on the national scene and gained notoriety in 2015 for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law in Indiana. As reported in Business Insider, many who read the law said made it possible for businesses within the state of Indiana to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community based on their personal religious beliefs. Pence did his best to label the law as defending religious freedom. "The Constitution of the United States and the Indiana Constitution both provide strong recognition of the freedom of religion but today, many people of faith feel their religious liberty is under attack by government action," Pence said when he signed the bill. But detractors weren't convinced. The law brought calls for boycotts on products from Indiana. Significant negative publicity followed, and the law was eventually amended. I think many in the State of Indiana, including many Republicans, were thrilled when Pence joined Donald Trump's presidential ticket, not because he was on the national ticket (because at the time, no one thought Trump would win), but because it just got him out of Indiana.
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