By Scott Williams
New Hampshire has a back-pedaling surprise, California readies for the Supreme Court ruling, Congress tries to trump the D.C. council, and one Oregon tribe gets more inclusive.
The New Hampshire legislature lacked two votes on Wednesday to passing a bill allowing same-sex marriages in the state, this just two weeks after it voted to sanction those unions. Governor John Lynch had asked the legislature to revisit the thinking of the earlier bill, this time offering protections for religious organizations and their employees who do not approve of homosexual unions.
Another vote on the measure will come up again in early June. By that time, the California Supreme Court will have handed down their ruling on the November ballot initiative that specified marriage as between one man and one woman. Last year about this time, the high court overruled a similar state law to grant full marriage rights to couples of the same sex. That ruling was overturned when the people voted, by a narrow margin, to officially recognize only heterosexual unions.
Many believe the California court will uphold the vote of the people, but I'm not so sure, given the empassioned argument Chief Justice Ronald George made for allowing marriage to any couple who wants it. This is what I wrote in a Culture Watch post last May 28 about the ruling:
The state Supreme Court made a subtle but profound side step from previous thinking. Instead of saying that the state cannot prohibit a person from choosing to marry, it claimed that the state cannot prohibit who a person chooses to marry. Marriage, they say, is established in the bonds of love, and the state should not interfere. As the State Court of Appeals (and every other decision before) defined it, no one is prohibited from marrying (marriage being according to the traditional definition). But the California Supreme Court declared that the state was prohibiting it because it too narrowly defined marriage.
Whether the Supreme Court will reverse its previous decision and side with the voters or hold firm to their 2008 position is anyone's guess. What is fairly certain is that the ruling will either come down on May 28 or June 2. The current session ends on June 3.
Meanwhile, a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives would define marriage in the District of Columbia as being between one man and one woman, just days after the city council voted 12-1 to open up marriage to same-sex partners. The House has a little more than a month to pass the bill before the city ordinance takes affect on July 6. The bill has 30 sponsors from both major parties, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has asked the Congress not to overrule the D.C. Council.
Over in Oregon, the Coquille Tribe law allowing same-sex marriage went into effect this week, following a year of powwowing about child support issues that may be affected. Anyone who is a Coquille may now marry a person of the same sex under tribal law. Presumably, it is the first tribe in the nation to do so.
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