Consider this bit of braggadocio about the advances of gay rights:
More than two-thirds of Americans say they would vote for their party’s “well-qualified gay candidate for president.”
See which Supreme Court justices agree the most and explore key cases and majority votes of the past session.
The first openly gay male federal judge was just confirmed by an overwhelming majority in the Senate, and President Obama has nominated four other gay candidates for the bench.
California requires public school textbooks to include the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Americans; New York lawmakers defied the Catholic Conference to legalize same-sex marriage; Congress allowed homosexuals to serve openly in the military.
Gay rights groups “have gained more political ground in less time than just about any other interest group in American political history,” a document states.
It’s not a fund-raising appeal from the Human Rights Campaign. It is from the legal brief filed on behalf of the House of Representatives in support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which withholds federal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in the states that allow them.
The point was that gays are not a politically powerless group singled out for discrimination and thus in need of heightened protection by the courts.
The DOMA case is part of the legal wrangling that has slowed what once looked like a relatively timely showdown in the Supreme Court over same-sex marriage.
Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the group that has spearheaded legal challenges to DOMA, does not foresee any decision by the justices until 2013.
And the celebrated effort to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage — led by the political odd couple of Democratic stalwart David Boies and former George W. Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson — is caught in a tangle of judicial procedures.
(It has also literally spawned a sideshow: Last week, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is behind the lawsuit, staged a Broadway play based on the trial’s transcript; actor John Lithgow portrayed Olson.)
U.S. District Judge R. Vaughn Walker in August 2010 struck California’s 2008 voter-approved Proposition 8 — which amended the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman — as violating the due process and equal protections of the U.S. Constitution.
The appeal is now bouncing back and forth between the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
It’s anyone’s guess how long the legal appeals are going to take and which cases are likely to reach the Supreme Court first.
Some put their money on the DOMA cases, which would offer the court a sort of intermediate step to consider same-sex marriage.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro in 2010 ruled unconstitutional the part of DOMA that defined marriage “as a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman.” That decision is on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.
And the Obama administration decided earlier this year it would no longer defend the law when couples in Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire filed suit.
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