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Gay on Trial: Why more than marriage is at stake in the federal legal challenge to Prop. 8. Tuesday, 11/24/09
American Prospect

Perry v. Schwarzenegger indeed asks the "ultimate question" of whether gays have a federal right to marry, but because the case is alleging that Prop. 8 violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, the federal court decision will have implications for gay Americans in nearly every arena of public life, from housing to parenting to military service. The court is set to consider questions as wide-ranging as what it means to be gay and whether it affects one's contribution to society. It's not just marriage rights on trial; it's homosexuality itself.

Organizations like Lambda and the ACLU may have had their reservations about bringing the case so soon, but the groups grudgingly attempted to join Olson's federal challenge because it will have such widespread implications. However, Northern California District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in August that their interests were already represented and barred all groups except for the San Francisco city attorney's office from entering the suit. This leaves Boies and Olson at the helm of the largest gay-rights case to date.

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In DC, LGBT Activists Won by Playing the Long Game Tuesday, 06/16/09
American Prospect

Yesterday the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics rejected Bishop Harry Jackson's efforts to put recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states to a referendum. The reason the referendum was rejected was because the proposed law would go against D.C.'s comprehensive human rights law that says proposed laws that would have the purpose or effect of discriminating against people based on sexual orientation can't be passed by referendum. The GLAA, a local gay rights group, lobbied hard to get the language regarding sexual orientation placed in the law in the 1970s, anticipating just this kind of situation.

What needs to be understood here is this is the exact inverse of the situation in California--there the law was on the side of anti-marriage equality activists. Here, the letter of the law completely favors the marriage equality side. D.C. law strictly prohibits putting laws that are potentially discriminatory against certain groups to a popular vote, if the referendum had been allowed to go through, the law would have been meaningless.

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We've Already Won the Battle Over Gay Marriage Tuesday, 04/14/09
American Prospect

More and more Democrats, and eventually even Republicans, will announce that where they once supported laws like the Defense of Marriage Act (signed by Clinton in 1996), they have come around to support marriage equality. But try to picture a politician going in the other direction -- saying that though he used to support same-sex marriage, he no longer does. It's almost impossible to imagine, because the direction history is moving has become so clear.

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