We're Goin' To The Chapel ... And We're Gonna Get Married

Three cheers to the Massachusetts Supreme Court for maintaining its stance on marriage equality, and for telling state legislators that their proposal for civil unions -- aka "marriage lite" for gay men and lesbians -- won't pass muster under the state constitution! And three hisses to the Massachusetts lawmakers who tried to revive the separate-but-equal approach to civil rights!

The Supreme Court writes about the civil union proposal:

The bill's absolute prohibition of the use of the word "marriage" by "spouses" who are the same sex is more than semantic. The dissimilitude between the terms "civil marriage" and "civil union" is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.

What about the Federal Defense of Marriage Act? What about those other states that won't acknowledge a same-sex marriage? The Supreme Court writes:

That there may remain personal residual prejudice against same-sex couples is a proposition all too familiar to other disadvantaged groups. That such prejudice exists is not a reason to insist on less than the Constitution requires. We do not abrogate the fullest measure of protection to which residents of the Commonwealth are entitled under the Massachusetts Constitution. Indeed, we would do a grave disservice to every Massachusetts resident, and to our constitutional duty to interpret the law, to conclude that the strong protection of individual rights guaranteed by the Massachusetts Constitution should not be available to their fullest extent in the Commonwealth because those rights may not be acknowledged elsewhere.

And here's where the Supreme Court tells the right wing, in no uncertain terms, to go fuck itself:

But neither may the government, under the guise of protecting "traditional" values, even if they be the traditional values of the majority, enshrine in law an invidious discrimination that our Constitution, "as a charter of governance for every person properly within its reach," forbids.

I'm so happy about today's Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts. I think civil unions were an important step toward equality, but they reinforce the idea that gay men and lesbians are second-class citizens whose partnerships deserve second-class recognition. Civil unions mean that we're allowed to sit on the bus, but civil marriage means that we don't have to stay in the back rows.

I'm sure George W. Bush and his Bible-clutching cronies will respond with some comment about "activist judges" foisting their political views upon the rest of the country. Perhaps Bush doesn't remember that it was a handful of activist judges, foisting their political views upon the rest of the country three years ago, that got him his current job.