The Gist

A Historic Day

For four hours we talked about the California marriage decision today on the show, and I must say I had goose bumps and teary eyes several times. Speaking with people like Evan Wolfson, among those who led the fight, and Robin Tyler, who was among those who decided to take this court and sue for the right to marry, we were all blown away by the excitement. I took calls from people across the U.S. and Canada, and from so many in California who were celebrating wildly, and I was exhausted yet ready to do another four hours -- and we will, tomorrow.

A few things that we focused on:

1) The California Supreme Court has enormous influence on other state courts, and you couldn't ask for a better second state to rule that marriage must be open to gays and lesbians. The 4-3 decision was detailed and pretty flawless, and, coming from a measured and moderate court dominated by Republican appointees, it will be hard to attack and the "activist judge" charge will only go so far.

2) Having experienced loses in New York's highest court and Washington State's, it was only a year ago when many were saying the strategy of fighting for marriage through the courts was dooming us, and that we needed to switch to legislatures, and get this done by the people's representatives to blunt charges of a judicial fiat. What California showed us is that we need to do both: Having the legislature in California pass a marriage bill twice (even though the governor vetoed it) and having a strong domestic partnership law in place already (practially a civil unions law), has made the California public more open, I believe, to marriage, so that now. when a court does the right and important thing, people will be more willing to accept it, even as the conservative foes of gays are organizing against the ruling.

3) This is not likely to be a huge issue in the presidential race -- not as big as it was in 2004. John McCain is opposed to a federal amendment banning marriage -- the only remedy the right sees in stopping states from making marriage legal for gays and lesbians -- and there aren't many more states left to launch statewide amendments in (many have been passed already, particularly in 2004), and it's already late in the political season anyway.

4) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both were pretty cold-hearted, not even putting out statements themselves but rather having their campaigns issue very tepid support without quoting the candidates directly. No matter their positions -- and both have said in the past that they support a state deciding on marriage as a remedy to give gays equal rights even if they don't personally (supposedly) support that remedy over civil unions -- this is a huge civil rights win, and they both have been civil rights lawyers, and the least the Democratic candidates could do is say, hey, congratulations!

5) Couples from out of state, unlike the case with Massachusetts, can go to California and marry when the weddings begin in about 30 days. And New York is a state whose courts have recently ruled that out-of-state marriages of gays and lesbians must be recognized. So there will be a lot of people going to CA from NY to tie the knot. Even though Canada is right across the border from New York and its marriages of gays and lesbians are now recognized in NY, for some reason it doesn't register the same way. The connection between NYC and LA and SF is so strong that I think we're going to see much bi-coastal or cross-country or whatever-you-want-to-call-it marrying going on.

6) The organizing from the fundies is going to be fierce -- they see this as the battle of all battles: If they don't stop this in California, they reason, it will soon spread everywhere -- and they are right! A ballot measure to ban marriage in the California Constitution, thus overturn the ruling, looks like it will be on the ballot this November. It is so important that everyone across the country take up this fight. Go to Equality For All and do the best you can to help out.

Things are going to be very different after this. We've hit a very high point in this movement. Now we have to sustain it.