Finally, the issue of universal marriage has come to the Supreme Court so that a national dialogue can at least begin, stripped of religious symbolism and meretricious rhetoric, predicated on this one basic question:
What is the government’s interest, state or federal, in drawing a line of distinction between gay and straight relationships?
It’s a question that I personally have been invested in for as long as I can remember, unarguably way more so than any indefectibly straight, single man who is not a lawyer or has any background in law ever should. I have written about, lobbied on behalf of, and fought for universal marriage more than any other political matter. I have gone so far as to label such willed discrimination as heterosexual apartheid. (I don’t much care for the term of art “gay marriage,” because that automatically sets the tone in a misguided direction. The issue is one of contract law, which I believe, as many do, is a matter protected by the Establishment Clause of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants equal protection to citizens. It is a marriage contract, after all, which when recognized, is your token exchange for all the 1600+ benefits bestowed upon you as a married couple from the state and federal governments. Besides, it carries the connotation of “universal suffrage” to it.)
But I don’t care to delve into all that right now, mainly because there isn’t much I can add that you, dear reader, do not already know. So instead I thought to make this scribble a little more fun and interesting by placing bets about how the Court will rule on Proposition 8, the ballot question a majority of Californian voters approved in 2008 that categorically denied recognition of same-sex marriages (but still kept intact civil unions). With the oral arguments occurring coincidentally during the March Madness of college basketball, below you will see my own brackets. All winners will receive one of the following: a new poem dedicated to you, a new scribble of a topic of the winner’s own suggestion, or future swag the likes of t-shirts and lapel pins that read “I Got Scribbled A Bit.”
scribblesabit 