A victory for common sense and decency: 5 Cheers and 4 Raspberries for the SCOTUS as it Bars States from Blocking Gay Marriage

By Dave Lindorff

The pig-headed small-mindedness and intellectual dishonesty of most fundamentalists of whatever religion knows no bounds.

Kudos to the narrow majority of the five Supreme Court justices for today at least blowing one result of that pig-headedness out of the water with their ruling declaring that states cannot abridge or deny gay couples from marrying in a state-sanctioned union, and receiving all the benefits that come from such a union.

The opposition to gay marriage has never made any constitutional sense. It has always been based upon a false conflating of church weddings and the legal marriage that is conferred by local governments in accordance to state laws. The fundamentalists -- people like Jerry Falwell or ex-Senator and perennial GOP presidential wannabe Rick Santorum and their ilk -- have claimed ad nauseum that sanctioning gay marriage would "weaken" marriage as an institution, citing in support the Bible, which they eroneously claim "defines" marriage as the "union of one man and one woman." (Hell, it doesn't even include the number one, as many male characters in the Bible have more than one wife.)

But aside from the obvious point that with divorce rates in the US running at close to 50% for first marriages, the "institution" itself is pretty weak on its own and doesn't need any help from gay couples, who actually have a pretty good record of staying together, when it comes to that, even when denied the right to marry as has long been the case.

More importantly, nothing in the Supreme Court's decision would require any church to itself offer marriage services to gay couples. That is a battle that has to be fought religious sect by religious sect -- something that has been going on for some time now. What the court has done, and its action is shamelessly long in coming -- is say that the civil procedure of registering a marriage cannot be denied to anyone because of sexual orientation, and that with that change, gay couples who marry in accordance with Constitutionally protected state law anywhere in the US (or elsewhere in the world one would assume), have the same rights and legal responsibilities and liabilities as do heterosexual couples.

With this decision, gay couples have the same right to adopt children, to visit each other in the hospital, to have joint bank accounts, to obtain health benefits offered to employee spouses, to file joint income taxes and to share in driving a rental car. They also will enjoy the protection of divorce law, will be liable where appropriate, for paying child support and sometimes alimony in the event of a divorce, and will have the protection of shared ownership of property except where there are pre-nuptial agreements signed.

If any of that weakens what's left of religious marriage vows (which I sincerely doubt), then tough...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2791