Events of this week are very promising regarding the expansion of gay marriage rights.
California’s Ninth Circuit Court has declared Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in 2008 as unconstitutional, upholding a district court ruling, and this makes it likely that gay marriage will be on the Supreme Court docket very soon, possibly even this year, already full of turning point cases on the Obama Health Care plan, voting rights, and illegal immigration restrictions in Arizona and Alabama.
Additionally, the state of Washington is about to become the seventh state to allow gay marriage, after passage by the state legislature and a soon to be signing by the governor of the state.
So Washington joins Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Iowa as states that allow gay marriage, along with Washington DC, and hopefully, it will return to California where it was legal for a period of time before being overturned.
Twenty to thirty years from now, when gay marriage is a normal thing, many will wonder what was the fuss back in the early part of the century, much like when one looks back to before 1967, one wonders why the big deal over racial intermarriage, which was not legal until a Supreme Court decision in 1967.
Marriage cannot be forced on any religious group, but there is no legal reason why gay marriage cannot be done outside of religious institutions that reject change. It is a question of basic human rights, and equal treatment under the Constitution!