Progressive Nation

November 9th, 2005

Texas Gay Marriage Ban

The Texas Taliban won big last night as 74% of voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage.

It should be patently clear that there’s a strong judicial precedent against the ability of individual states to make their own marriage laws. Go back to 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that individual states couldn’t prohibit persons of different races from marrying each other. You can see where I’m going with this: the logic of Loving clearly suggests that states can’t enact laws prohibiting same-sex life partners from entering into the same institutional arrangement enjoyed by different-sex couples.

I think the Supreme Court needs to clarify what the Constitution says about gay marriage. The question, it seems to me, is whether the Loving precedent is the right one here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Moral Values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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