If we have learned anything...

Yesterday, Richard Just posted an article at The New Republic on the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision on the gay marriage question. Just's article nicely summarizes the ruling, and underscores the key ideas and their implications. The ruling itself is worth reading, but check out the article for a reminder that more is at stake in this election than whose tax cut is bigger.

Excerpted from: ELIZABETH KERRIGAN ET AL. v. COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC HEALTH ET AL. (SC 17716)

Although we traditionally have viewed that right as limited to a union between a man and a woman, ‘‘if we have learned anything from the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views and official policies toward members of minority races and toward women over the past half-century, it is that even the most familiar and generally accepted of social practices and traditions often mask unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed by those practices or traditions.

It is instructive to recall in this regard that the traditional, well-established legal rules and practices of our not-so-distant past (1) barred interracial marriage, (2) upheld the routine exclusion of women from many occupations and official duties, and (3) considered the relegation of racial minorities to separate and assertedly equivalent public facilities and institutions as constitutionally equal treatment.’’

| +Save/Share | |