The federal definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman appears to be unconstitutional, with the expected sort of 5-4 split that essentially says it's an issue with no clear answer.
Not unexpected, given the number of states that provide for same-sex marriage, the military no longer excluding people based upon their sexual identification, and the general acceptance in popular culture of gay (male homosexual) and lesbian (female homosexual) characters in most forms of media and entertainment.
There's a set of train tracks, and the train isn't levitating or going off the rails or suddenly stopping against its own inertia.
So now the legal doors are open to recognizing same-sex marriages at the federal level. Is anyone really surprised? The times, they are a-changin'.
Done deal for the time being. Which would be good if everyone would just shut up about it, but they won't. Another fact of life.
The irksome thing is still how media outlets (from far left to far right and everything in the middle) still frequently insist on wrongly and incorrectly and against both logic and grammar calling this gay marriage. Where is the legal language specifying any such thing as the sexuality of the participants?
When in a "traditional" and "normal" and "standard" historical definition of marriage in most of the western world for most of the last few centuries, marriage was one man and one woman. Well this is 2013, some say. And indeed, it is 2013.
When in that sort of marriage though.... Well let's say right now it's forty years ago in 1973. When one man and one woman went to get a marriage license, they variously had to show or prove in some way or ways that they weren't closely related, they were "of sound mind and sound body", they weren't already married, and so on. You'll notice in that list, and if you took a look at the laws in various states and locales in the US at the time you'd also see a clear lack of a number of other things required or even mentioned. Fertility or lack thereof, plans on offspring or domicile choices, economic divisions, home and professional work splits. Political parties, religion, social outlook, environmental thoughts, memberships in political and social organizations.
None of that's there.
As we've discussed before, there is also nothing there about the sexual ideas, thoughts, behaviors, practices, orientations, proclivities, activities of the two people. No check for kinks, fetishes, desires, habits. Nobody asks if either or both likes wearing the clothing of the opposite, gender-identifies with their biological sex or not, or anything of the sort.
So when 'a man and a woman' went to get married back then. There was no 'one man and five women' or 'woman and boy' or 'two men' or 'two bisexuals' or 'brother and sister' or 'hermaphrodite and transvestite' or 'transgender and transssexual'. That's our first thing. Calling the current changes "gay marriage" at least implicitly precludes and discriminates all those other groupings. If you're fighting for inclusiveness, limiting marriage to "gay" is just as exclusionary and elitist and limiting it to "straight" or anything else.
Aside from both "straight" and "gay" being incorrect in the first place.
There was nothing in 1973 stopping a homosexual woman and a homosexual man from marrying each other. (Unless they were unable to enter into contracts, too closely related, already married, etc.) Why? The laws did not, as they do not now, discriminate against gender or sexuality. Or indeed any number of other things that the laws simply did not cover at all. It was not asked if the one man and one woman were straight, thought of themselves as their biological sex, was Jewish or Satanist, were going to have children, wore appropriate clothing, listened to Top 40 AM radio. That was simply marriage. Or if you wish, opposite-sex not-related legal-age single-couple mental-competent un-diseased marriage.
Opposite-sex and straight are not synonymous.
Because biological sex is not sexuality, no opposite-sex marriage has to be straight (non-gay) marriage. Any more than in an opposite-sex marriage do the two participants (for now) have to portray the "expected and appropriate" gender roles. In an opposite-sex marriage, the man could stay home and take care of the house (and children, should there be any) while the woman went out and earned the income. And when she returned home from work, they could both be way into B&D or S&M (or BDSM even) with he the dom and she the sub. Or the other way around. Many other things. Swingers with multiple partners. Both totally gay, going out to their own same-sex worlds at night. Nothing precluded any of that. (Although the behaviors may indeed have been illegal.)
Likewise, same-sex and gay are not synonymous.
Yet why do so many persist in calling it gay marriage when neither of the participants needs to be gay at all in a same-sex relationship, any more than either of the participants in an opposite-sex marriage needs to be straight.
They persist because calling it gay marriage possibly because it makes the term bring up certain images. Controls the dialog. Limits who wants to get married (the definition of marriage here still being a very exclusionary specific "two sane unrelated adults") because of what everyone perceives a marriage is supposed to be. Perhaps even it's just so non-gay same-sex people won't try and horn in on the action. Don't believe it? It's hardly a new or unique idea. For example, Boson Legal covered the subject to various extents and directions five years ago back in 2008.
Maybe it's so the other very obvious issues can be sidestepped. Legal, relationship, economic issues. For example, many men and women get married to gather citizenship for them or their offspring. To avoid testifying against each other in court. To get tax benefits and advantages. Rights of survivorship or ability to perform legal actions without powers of attorney.
Because in fact, there is no requirement people getting married love each other either. No requirement they have sex with each other too. Even the idea of romantic love, or marriage for love, is a recent idea socially. Either way though, those things are not and really haven't ever been part of the requirements for marriage. Why would same-sex be any different than opposite-sex? It isn't. Love, sex, children, not requirements to be married. Now what, hmmmm?
Case in point of what's being ignored and marginalized and not dealt with in constantly referring to it incorrectly as gay marriage.
Take two women who are not gay/lesbian/homosexual/LGBT. The same works for two men, but socially, women are less likely to feel uncomfortable or stigmatized by entering into a same-sex relationship when they are straight. That is, currently it is more likely for two straight women to enter into a same-sex marriage. Which the way things are going, there will at some point be just marriage but with a set of rules that doesn't specify the biological sex of the participants, but we aren't there yet.
But we clearly can (and will and already have) two people of the same biological sex who are not homosexual and who are not in love and who won't have physical sex. Getting married for whatever reason they want -- why would anyone possibly be correct in calling same-sex marriage gay marriage. It's never any more correct than calling opposite-sex marriage straight marriage. Even if it almost always works out that way or almost never works out that way. They're neither synonymous.
Let's take some same-sex couple and this idea further. Just as it would be for the reciprocal, any two woman (be they straight or gay or some mix, in love or indifferent or despising each other) can't have children through any inherent biological natural process either. So now we no longer have any reason whatsoever in the slightest to preclude even the closest of relatives from marrying.
Why, without genetics as an issue, is there any possible reason to preclude same-sex marriages of mothers and daughters? Grandfathers and fathers? Sisters, brothers, cousins. There isn't any genetic reasons, and what are the cultural ones that are any different than same-sex love both mental and physical.
So yes you may say that sisters marrying, even though they're straight (and even if they weren't they can't have children still anyway) is unnatural, wrong, disgusting. You may think that, but that doesn't make you correct, or even qualified to comment on what other people do. Objectively It's no more and no less any better or worse than than a transgendered transvestite hermaphrodite masochist pederast bisexual marrying a horse would be. No more or less than homosexuals or polygamists. It's all in the mind. It's all a social construct. It's all an opinion and not some natural law.
Even if it was all "natural law" there aren't many things nature deems illegal. It's not just homosexual or cross-gender or alpha behaviors in a social construct. Many animals (including humans) are variously cannibals and serial killers and mass murderers. They murder each other or their own children or the children of others. Violent tendencies, randomly killing anything they see. Carnivore predators. Or even the gentle fun-loving polar bear Natural law is far more forgiving of all sorts of actions than human law is. (Or we could indulge ourselves in non-directly-comparable flights of fancy. Such as, what stops two sibling or ascendant/descendant non-humans, birds or insects or dogs or cats, from getting the equivalent of married?)
Others may suggest that it's against the law and will of God. Well as soon as He comes down and clarifies a great number of subjects and inconsistencies and no longer applicable things from 1800+ years ago? It's not quite as clear as it needs to be. So until then, we'll just go ahead and skip that entire circular unprovable rather unsolvable argument here. For the time being, it's really not all that directly applicable -- not for everyone equally and universally.
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So while SCOTUS has just narrowly said in their infinite wisdom that federally defining marriage as man+woman is against some esoteric highly-subjective section or another of the Constitution as established through recent precedent. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right against unreasonable search and seizure. Inter-state commerce. Or whatever it is they've done and however it is they've done it.
The door is now open to federally recognizing the marriage status of two people regardless of the biological sex of the participants. What is next to come? Probably something.
Just stop calling it what it's not. It's not gay or straight or both inherently or by definition linguistically. What it is is two people (subject to certain other objectively arbitrary limitations) in a legal contract called marriage.
Here we are some year and a half plus, and we're still going where we're going as the states head towards 50 and SCOTUS is on the way to giving an actual answer. Well, plus lots of the headlines are still wrong, and many of the stories phrase things as if this all now allows homosexuals to marry. As before, as if only "gay people" can enter into a same-sex marriage (clearly incorrect) and that before now "gay people" couldn't get married (suggesting "at all"). Which is certainly true that homosexual people of the same-sex can't get married to each other if same-sex marriage isn't allowed, but untrue that homosexuals weren't allowed to marry. (Quibbling at the difference between connotations and denotations between "at all" and "to each other" being left out, or guessing what the writers meant and/or wanted the reader to think.) And still all as if the biology of the participants was the only thing unfair about marriage in law or in practice.
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