Supreme Court Won't Bar Start Of Mass. Gay Marriages
High Court Denies Emergency Appeal By Conservative Group

POSTED: 4:19 p.m. EDT May 14, 2004
UPDATED: 7:14 p.m. EDT May 14, 2004

BOSTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to block the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages from taking place next week, in Massachusetts.

The justices declined without comment to intervene and block clerks from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in the state, whose highest court had ruled in November that the state Constitution allows gay couples to marry, and declared that the process would begin on Monday.



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Conservative groups appealed Friday's ruling from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court refused to overturn a lower judge's order that allowed gay marriages in the state go forward, beginning Monday.

The Florida-based Liberty Counsel had asked the Supreme Court whether the Massachusetts judges had wrongly redefined marriage. The conservative group said that task should be handled by elected legislators.

Even though it denied the injunction, the federal appeals court Friday did agree to hear arguments in the case, but not until June. By then, several weeks of legal gay marriages will have taken place.

The leader of the conservative group Liberty's Counsel called Friday's action "a bump in the road."

A federal judge Thursday refused to grant an injunction stopping the marriages. The judge said the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court acted within its authority to interpret the term "marriage" in the state's constitution and order the issuing of marriage licenses to gay couples, starting Monday.

The foes of gay marriages say the highest state court in Massachusetts overstepped its bounds when it ruled that the marriages were legal.

Massachusetts Prepares
Meanwhile, same-sex couples are getting ready to ring wedding bells Monday.

For centuries, the Arlington Street Church in Boston has been the center of the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement and for the last 40 years, the gay rights movement. Robert Compton and David Wilson will be the first to be married at the church under the new law Monday.

"This really represents the latest chapter in the history of the civil rights movement in America and the history of the civil rights movements in this particular congregation starting with the anti-slavery movement here in this congregation, moving right up to some of the antiwar movements," said Jeff Quinlan of the Arlington Street Church.

But the biggest day comes later in the week, when couples that did not seek a waiver of the three-day waiting period for all marriage license holders walk down the aisle. In all, 37 couples will do so.

"Thursday is the big day," said Jeff Bouchard of the Arlington Street Church. "Every 20 minutes there will a couple coming up, they will be meeting with the clergy, they will speak with them, sign their license, walk out with a picture of themselves and a rose."

Across the city, caterers, florists and wedding planners are hoping for a boost in business this spring. At the Copley Marriott, Michael Horgan and Ed Balmelli will marry Monday night, followed by a casual celebration that won't include some of the traditions of other weddings.

"You certainly won't find some of the things you would normally find, even a champagne toast, no cake, and the ceremony will be very simple and straight forward, very quick," said Kurt Brown of the Boston Marriott Copley.

Many same-sex couples marrying next week have lived together for years, even decades, but they are realistic and know that not everyone who shows up on Monday will be celebrating their unions.

"In any situation of this magnitude, something like that is always there. Yes, it does concern us, but we are prepared for anything of that event and this is life. We expect it to be that way," Bouchard said.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called on protesters to be respectful and hospitable to those getting married on Monday. The state's most prominent opponent of gay marriages, Romney said he might attend same-sex wedding ceremonies in the future. But he declined the first invitation from radio personality Darrell Martini, known as the Cosmic Muffin. Romney said he had a scheduling conflict.

 

We - the silent majority- have been quiet too long.
We must start removing these political HACKS. Wacking away at the morals of this country.

 

It will only truely end when you and Hoss tie the knot....

 

Thanks for the posting. I hoped DTR was one place I wouldn't here about them. All the local news stations can't get away from this.

 

One of the first hits on "mixed race marriage amendment"

http://www.elkin.com/race_claims_ech...age_debate.htm

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were married in June 1958. She was black; he was white. The wedding was performed in Washington, D.C., where the law permitted racially mixed marriage. The Lovings then settled in Caroline County, Virginia. That October a grand jury indicted the Lovings for violating Virginia’s law against marriage between whites and non-whites. The two pleaded guilty in January 1959 and were given a choice: Go to jail for a year, or take a 25-year suspended sentence on condition that they leave Virginia and not return. The Lovings opted for the latter and retreated to Washington.

The judge who exiled the Lovings wrote that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”

Their banishment must have rankled the Lovings. In 1963, just after the Rev. Martin Luther King led his march to the nation’s capital, they launched a court fight to overturn their convictions. Virginia’s courts upheld the anti-miscegenation law, which was enacted in that state as the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” citing a 1955 ruling in which the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia concluded that the state had a legitimate purpose for its anti-miscegenation laws. This was “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood,” the creation of “a mongrel breed of citizens” and “the obliteration of racial pride.”

The Lovings appealed to the Supreme Court, which had no trouble concluding that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Equal Protection clause barring race-based discrimination. Besides Virginia, the states with such laws in 1967 were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. All were Southern and border states where all sorts of equal rights battles raged in the 1950s and 1960s.

This was not just a Southern issue, however. Between 1952 and 1967 the following 14 states repealed long-standing anti-miscegenation laws: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. All but Indiana and Maryland were Western states where the bans on mixed-race marriage were primarily targeted at Native Americans (and, on the West Coast, Asians) rather than blacks.