The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, November 18

Jim Burroway

November 18th, 2014

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From  Wilde Side, September 1, 1976, page 22.

From Wilde Side, September 1, 1976, page 22.

Sporter’s was a friendly leather/levi/dive bar in Boston’s Beacon Hill. It’s not clear when Sporter’s opened, but I did find a reference in 1972 describing the establishment as a gay bar “of long standing.” The building now houses a restaurant/pub.

Julie and Hillary Goodridge

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Massachusetts Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Marriage Equality: 2003. It’s over a decade since the Bay State became the first in the nation to provide marriage equality for same-sex couples, and the sky still hasn’t fallen. Massachusetts still has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, and school children are still not being subjected to live gay sex demonstrations as part of their state-mandated curriculum. But gay couples can marry, and that was due to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in 2003.

In Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the court ruled 4-3 that the state could not “deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.” The court gave the state legislature 180 days to “take any such action as it may deem appropriate” to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Liberty Counsel tried to get the Federal Courts involved, but those efforts failed when the judge denied their request, the First Circuit Court of Appeals backed him up, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. After a long drawn-out battle in which the Massachusetts high court ruled in response to a question from the state Senate that civil unions would not satisfy the court’s ruling, the legislature ended up taking no action, neither blocking nor implementing the Goodridge decision. The state began marrying same-sex couples on May 17, 2004.

Since then, marriage equality has spread to thirty-three states, the District of Columbia, St. Louis Missouri (and in a few other locations in the Show-Me State), and ten Indian tribes. Two more states — Montana and South Carolina — are subject to binding Federal Appeals Court rulings, and they are likely to join the marriage equality bandwagon any day now. Judges have also struck down marriage equality bans in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan and Texas. Those cases are now on appeal. Today, nearly 64% of all Americans live in marriage equality jurisdictions.

If you know of something that belongs on the Agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

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