Marriage equality today, marriage equality tomorrow, marriage equality forever
by digby
Congratulations to all of our gay brothers and sisters. It looks like the Supreme Court has accepted the inevitable. Today they declined to hear seven marriage equality cases. Here's what it means:
Same sex marriage is about to be legal in the state of Utah. Utah! Ponder that for a minute. If you were going to pick one of the very last states that would legalize same sex marriage, it would have been this conservative state.
The fact that the Supreme Court, without saying a peep, is letting court-ordered same sex marriages go forward in Utah is a huge deal. Now you may think that this could well be reversed once there is a circuit split, perhaps in a case from the 5th or 6th Circuit. But remember, there will now be all of these children from legal same sex marriages performed until the Supreme Court could decide to take a case from another circuit. The idea that Justice Kennedy would let that happen, knowing there could well be a reversal down the line seems unlikely.
Instead, the conservatives on the Court probably see same sex marriage as inevitable, and will wait for a circuit split to make their last stand.
It's hard to see how they can reverse it. There are already a whole lot of gay parents (always have been, they're just now able to parent together) and a whole lot of laws that are necessarily being created to deal with that new circumstance. Aside from the obvious moral obstacle of breaking up happy families, there will be the complications of untangling many legal issues. For now they're letting it stay at the state level and that's where the battle, what remains of it, will take place.
.