Gay citizens: Is there such a thing?...

Andrew Sullivan makes a great point over at The Daily Dish...

...gay adults have fewer rights in their relationships than 13-year old straights. Inmates on death row have more rights - they have an inviolable right to marry even if they will never be able to live with or even have sex with their spouse. The clinically insane have an inalienable right to marry. Larry King has the inalienable right to marry seven times to six different women. Suze Orman? Not so much. And the repercussions extend to social security [PDF] and over a thousand other federal benefits. And that is entirely a deliberate message sent to gay citizens: you are anathema, and your families are worthless. Your own government will continue to treat you as if you did not exist...

Insofar as the legal arguments to be considered in Prop 8, as Dale Carpenter over at The Volokh Conspiracy so aptly buts it...

...In principle, the justices’ votes on whether there is a right to same-sex marriage and on whether a proposition repealing that right is an amendment, are independent questions. A judge could believe there’s a fundamental right to same-sex marriage but that the state constitution liberally allows amendments by simple majority votes. On the other hand, a judge could believe there’s no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, but think that once the right is recognized, the elimination of a fundamental right for a suspect class is such a monumental act, and is fraught with so many dangers if allowed to stand as a precedent, that it can be accomplished only by revision...

Complicated. Everyone seems to agree the decision will come down in two parts: Gays keep your marriages, California keep your amended constitution. We've got 90 days to find out.


Addendum: I now understand the issue surrounding the word marriage. Ok I get it. For some marriage means something different than its vernacular use in both secular civil life. Usually langauge specificity is important to me. In this case. It's not. What the hell people (by whom I mean gay marriage opponents)? Really, really you (again by whom I mean gay marriage opponents) believe that when gay people do that civil ceremony, whatever the name, that they will not call it marriage. Get a grip. Marriage, the word, its civil forms and ceremonies, and its religious forms and ceremonies, is American venacular English. It is venacular that is well understood to not necessarily mean anything specifically or particularily religious. Removing marriage discrimination and establishing marriage equality has never been a threat to religious freedom.

Semantics are never a strong argument for arbitrary discrimination.