AGAINST “CHRISTIAN ENTITLEMENT” IN PUBLIC SERVICE: A BRIGHT-LINE, HARD-LINE POSITION.

Summary: When Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe prevented openly gay Democratic Rep. Brian Sims from speaking in the House by invoking “God’s law,” the Republican opened up a real can of worms.  Arguably, Metcalfe’s misconduct constitutes perjury, inasmuch as he violated his oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States.  Moreover, Metcalfe’s behavior betrays a disturbing sense of so-called Christian Entitlement, which certain so-called Christians use as a vehicle to exclude from the life of the commonwealth those whose views and beliefs differ from theirs.  It is improper ever to invoke or appeal to denominational scripture in forming public policy, as it is equally improper to abridge the civil rights of one to assuage the religious discomforts of another, and it is even more wrong to put the civil rights of discrete minorities up for popular vote.  So-called Christians who believe in the propriety of any of these things are simply wrong.  Daryl Metcalfe is unfit to serve in public office any time, anywhere.  Cathedral City’s mayor, who based her opposition to marriage equality on her ostensible and ostentatious Catholicism, should take note.


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By: Paul S. Marchand

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, “disobeying God” is apparently sufficient grounds to prevent legislative speech.

In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Harrisburg the other day, Pennsylvania State Rep. Brian Sims, (D) Philadelphia, rose to speak on SCOTUS’s ruling in U.S. v.  Windsor.  As the openly gay legislator (the only one in the Commonwealth’s General Assembly) prepared to comment on the demise of DOMA, Republican State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe invoked a procedural objection to prevent Mr. Sims from speaking.  Metcalfe’s objection will go down as one of the most outrageous and astonishing interventions in the history of the Commonwealth, and possibly in American history.
In justifying his astonishing misconduct, Metcalfe declared that

 “I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God's law.”

Later, Metcalfe doubled down:

  “For me to allow him to say things that I believe are open rebellion against God are for me to participate in his open rebellion. There's no free speech on the floor.”

Were such an event to take place in a Muslim country, hard right wing bloviators such as Metcalfe would have been quick to take the podium to vent theatrical outrage.

In this country, Metcalfe’s misbehavior symbol represents another manifestation of what has been called “Christian Entitlement.”  It is a theory which postulates that the profession of a particularly hard-edged, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” Christian ideological line necessarily trumps the rights of others to believe as they see fit and to articulate ideas which may make ostentatious “Christians” uncomfortable.

Leaving aside for a moment the grave theological error --- to say nothing of the deadly sin of pride --- into which Metcalfe falls with his facepalm-inducing nonsense, Metcalfe’s hard line invocation of “Christian Entitlement” necessarily calls forth an equally hard-line response.
As a number of progressive Christian thinkers, the Rev. Canon Susan Russell among them, have noted, you are not being persecuted when you are prevented from persecuting others.  “Christian Entitlement” turns this reality on its head, claiming not only that Christians are persecuted when they are prevented from persecuting others, but that Christians --- being in possession of Truth with a capital T --- are entitled, by virtue of their claims possession of that Truth with a capital T, to silence, intimidate, and even persecute those whose views and ideology are not precisely congruent with their own. 

Thus, the need for a hard-line, bright-line response to the misconduct of oath-breakers and moral perjurers like Daryl Metcalfe.  A few simple points will suffice.

First, to be authentically loyal to our American ideals and commonwealth, one must reject absolutely the idea that it is ever permissible to appeal to or invoke any denominational scripture or theology when forming public policy.  America was founded upon the allied and intertwined principles of freedom of religion and freedom from religion.  You cannot be loyal to America’s founding principles and insist that you have the right to invoke what you believe is “God’s law” to shut down speech and debate in a representative chamber.

Second, the right of any individual to authentic, first-class membership in our American body politic, should never be infringed, abridged, or denied to assuage the religious, political, or ideological discomforts of any other individual whomsoever.  America is a raucous, vibrantly diverse society, and one of the prices we pay for the freedoms we treasure is that others will believe, think, worship, or speak in ways that may cause us discomfort, and with which we may disagree vehemently.  Putting up with differences of opinion and belief is part of our social contract: “I do not agree with what you have said, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  We have the right to insist that our elected representatives do us and their colleagues the constitutional courtesy of respecting differences of opinion.  For once a religious sanction is invoked, the mind turns, thought departs, and we are a step away from the horrors of the Inquisition or Europe’s stomach-turning Wars of Religion.

Third, the civil rights of discrete and identifiable minorities within the body politic are not properly the subject of popular votes.  California has a deplorable history of using the ballot box to pass hateful and discriminatory laws intended to cause harm to disfavored minorities.  The Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, African-Americans, and queerfolk have all found themselves on the receiving end of such nastiness, and in every case, the courts have intervened to redress the constitutional imbalance created by such legislation.  The so-called will of the people ends where the Constitution begins.

Finally, there is no right, anytime, anywhere, to seek to exclude from the commonwealth those who do not look like us, live like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, or vote like us.  When Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives threw a temper tantrum and sought to prevent a Hindu chaplain from delivering an invocation in the cap house, they, like Daryl Metcalfe in Pennsylvania, not only raised serious questions about their own fitness for public service, but also raise serious questions about the extent to which they had perjured themselves in taking an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which very clearly declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of religion prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

So-called Christians who believe that it is ever right to invoke denominational scripture into public policy formation process, or who believe that it is permissible to infringe the civil rights of one to assuage the religious comforts of others, or who believe that civil rights are ever legitimate subjects for popular vote are simply wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong.

To the extent that the egregious Daryl Metcalfe sought to impose his Christian Entitlement views on his colleague, he was not only wrong, but he also violated his oath of office.  If he knew at the time that he took the oath that he intended to violate it in such fashion, then he may well have committed the crime of perjury, of telling a deliberate and material untruth under oath.  If so, Daryl Metcalfe may well have committed an impeachable offense.

At all events, Daryl Metcalfe has demonstrated his utter unfitness to hold any office of trust or profit under the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or of any other state or jurisdiction, anytime, anywhere.  Having served eight years in public office myself, and having also been throughout that period a confirmed, communicating Episcopalian, I never had the slightest difficulty conforming my conduct as a public official to the requirements of the Constitution.

Why is it apparently so difficult for the Daryl Metcalfes of this world to do so?   

The current mayor of Cathedral City, who infamously declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality, should take note.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council.  He is a confirmed, communicating member of the Episcopal Church, and has been for more than 30 years.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of TEC, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.  Heretics and haters take note, your comments will not be published.

AFTER THE GREAT DAY: the Queer Civil Rights Lawyers Full Employment Act of 2013.

Summary: After our victories in yesterday’s marriage decisions, which had the queer nation holding its collective breath, we have been able to exhale.  The world has not fallen apart, and the planet continues to rotate majestically and indifferently on its axis.  Still, things feel different.  Opponents of marriage equality continue to fulminate, and we know that the demise of DOMA will only engender further litigation to fill in the gaps and address the implications of what may well prove to be as consequential a decision for queerfolk as Brown v. Board of Education was for Americans of color six decades ago.  Yet, integrating the demise of DOMA into the way we do things will inevitably call forth bureaucratic resistance.  Such resistance will spawn lawsuits, and in the end, we may all find ourselves looking at the Windsor decision as the Queer Civil Rights Lawyers Full Employment Act of 2013.

By: Paul S. Marchand

If you felt a bit of a breeze yesterday morning, it was probably the queer nation exhaling.  We had waited and held our breath for so long, and passed so much time in fearful, fretful anticipation of how the Supreme Court might rule in its marriage cases, that the sense of relief and joy was almost palpable.  “Even better than sex,” said a friend of mine who is no stranger to queer intimacy.  Indeed, for a community that has been running on adrenaline since the marriage cases were argued, the letdown after yesterday’s victory can seem somewhat akin to withdrawal.
Perhaps the one ineluctable conclusion we can draw from yesterday’s decisions in Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v.  Windsor is that litigation, like small animals having sex in dark corners, simply reproduces itself.  It ain't over yet.

I suggested yesterday that nothing will ever be quite the same again.  This morning, on the morning after, as it were, as the alarm clock went off and I growled at it, I couldn’t help but remember the observation Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made about the coming of the 20th century in his novel August 1914, in which he suggested that the world had now moved “into a new era: that the entire atmosphere of the planet -its oxygen content, its rate of combustion, the mainspring pressure in all its clocks- had somehow changed.”  Somehow, things just feel different.

The change brought about by the marriage cases will be subtle and exquisitely difficult to quantify.  We know what marriage is, and we understand the strong case to be made for marriage equality.  What remains uncertain is where the queer nation, and the larger American commonwealth of which our queer nation is a part, actually goes from here.  How do we implement the Court’s relatively simple holding in Windsor?  What cases and controversies will emerge therefrom?

Already, opponents of marriage equality have unburdened themselves of apoplectic, splenetic, over-the-top screeds and diatribes about the awfulness of what the Court did yesterday.  Yet, even if the entire atmosphere of the planet -its oxygen content, its rate of combustion, the mainspring pressure in all its clocks-have somehow changed, life continues.  The planet continues to rotate majestically, indifferently on its axis.  People still get up and go to work today, even if some gay people will be marching into HR offices today to change their W-4 status from “single” to “married.”

The change we sought, the change we ourselves have become, will manifest itself in the smallest and most mundane ways.  The married gay man in the HR office quietly changing his W-4 status from single to married on the authority of U.S. v. Windsor may well be more of a revolutionary than all of the prideful, happy homosexuals rallying at the Marilyn Monroe statue in Palm Springs, or at West Hollywood’s iconic intersection of Santa Monica and San Vicente, in the Castro, or in the Village in New York.  The revolution will continue when the first lesbian couple amends its recent tax returns from two single women to “married, filing jointly,” and bureaucratic heads at the IRS begin to explode.

For quiet revolutionary change often calls forth stuttering, sputtering, spluttering, splenetic resistance from stubborn bureaucratic holdouts.  Our victory in Windsor was equivocal in that the Court did not address the issue of whether Section 2 of DOMA, which allows states to withhold recognition of validly contracted same-gender marriages performed in other states, improperly impinges upon the Full Faith and Credit Clause set forth in Section 1 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States.  Moreover, to the extent that the Windsor holding does little more than declare the unconstitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA, it effectively falls to legions of federal, state, and local bureaucrats to implement the Court’s ruling.  If the churlish behavior of certain county clerks in California in response to the California marriage cases back in 2008 is any indication, we can expect a lot of foot dragging from homophobic local officials.

Given the deep divisions within American society over marriage equality, and given calls from the religious right for opponents of marriage equality to engage in the same kind of so-called massive resistance to Windsor that supporters of Jim Crow urged in response to the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, it is reasonably foreseeable that Windsor will spawn the kind of protracted litigation that Brown called forth, as refractory, reactionary federal and state bureaucrats seek to frustrate the application of Windsor through selective and unsustainable invocations of rules, regulations, and policies originally informed by DOMA’s homophobic legislative intent.

• So, will the lesbian couple seeking to amend their tax returns from “single”to “married, filing jointly” catch flak from the IRS?  

• Will the gay man in the HR office wanting to change his W-4 status from single to married encounter hemming and hawing from the pen pushers in human resources? 

• Will married queerfolk have to do battle with self-appointed conservators and enforcers of so-called traditional values? 

• Will law enforcement agencies (which have historically tended to regard themselves as custodians and conservators of what they believe ought to be correct, traditional social mores) be able to integrate into their thinking the ramifications of possible marital evidentiary privileges as asserted by married queer couples? 

• Will healthcare providers be prepared to acknowledge the right of a same-gender spouse to make critical healthcare decisions for a stricken wife or husband?

In a sense, Windsor has raised as many questions as it settles.  Administratively speaking, Hollingsworth, which simply restored marriage equality in California, may not open merely the can of worms Windsor is about to open.

In fine, Windsor has done what watershed Supreme Court decisions are supposed to do; it has settled a broad principle of constitutional law --- that same-gender marriages are entitled to the same dignity as so-called traditional marriages --- but it has left the gaps be filled on an ongoing and ad hoc basis.  We now know what the law is, and what the Constitution says, about same-gender couples in federal law.  How we apply this newly articulated constitutional principle will be the subject of infinite wrangling, tangling, and litigation.

As American society struggles to integrate the implications and ramifications of Windsor into its thinking and policies, it will be incumbent upon the queer nation not to relax too much, but to keep fighting these further, interstitial skirmishes that will become an integral part of the changed legal landscape America’s queerfolk will need to navigate.  While Windsor has clarified one issue, it can justly be referred to as the Queer Civil Rights Lawyers Full Employment Act of 2013.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city Council.  In 1993, he was one of the first attorneys in California to take on a same-gender marriage challenge.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity with which he is associated, and are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, legal advice.  No haters allowed: comments containing personal attacks will not be approved for publication.

KEEPING TRYST WITH DESTINY:

KEEPING TRYST WITH DESTINY:


Summary: More than 40 years after two gay Minnesota activists unsuccessfully sought a marriage license, marriage equality took a huge step forward today as the Supreme Court held unconstitutional the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and dismissed for want of standing washed out Republican Dennis Hollingsworth’s feckless attempt to keep alive California’s unconstitutional Proposition 8.  The queer nation has kept the tryst with destiny we made so many years ago.  The pledge of ultimate equality and first-class citizenship we made to ourselves so long ago has been redeemed, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. The soul of the queer nation, so long suppressed, has found utterance, and nothing will ever be quite the same again.   Be fierce.  Be proud.  Great days lie ahead.  
  
           "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially."
            -Jawaharlal Nehru, addressing the Indian Constituent Assembly, on the night India  became independent, August 14-15, 1947.

Lo, it has been almost two generations that we queerfolk have been fighting what had seemed an unwinnable battle for legal recognition of our right to marry.  Today, we may have turned a great corner in that ongoing fight, winning a pair of victories that, while equivocal, may nonetheless represent game-changers.

On May 18, 1970, Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell unsuccessfully applied to the clerk of the Hennepin County, Minnesota District Court for a marriage license.  On December 19, 1990, three same-sex couples also applied unsuccessfully for marriage licenses at the Hawai’i Department of Health.  While Baker and McConnell’s early appeals were unavailing, the Hawai’i couples’ appeals two decades later produced what was for the time a startling result.  In Baehr v. Lewin (1993) 74 Haw. 530, 852 P.2d 44, the Hawai’i Supreme Court held that the state would have to show a compelling justification for restricting marriage to opposite-gender couples.

In 1996, in a classic example of what Lyndon Johnson once called “frontlash,” the Republican dominated Congress passed, and Bill Clinton (in one of his more unfortunate capitulations) signed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), largely motivated by homophobic Republican Congressional desires to keep us uppity queers from enjoying even a tithe of the civil rights taken for granted by our straight neighbors.

The subsequent history of the fight for marriage equality is almost too well known to require further recapitulation.  Civil Unions, which had emerged at the end of the 20th century as a possible “Plan B” option, soon gave way to growing insistence that marriage by that name, and not some other, was the only constitutionally defensible posture for the queer nation to adopt.

Here in California, the sad history of Proposition 22 and Proposition 8, both heavily bankrolled by the Mormon and Roman Catholic churches, bore witness not only to the challenges facing the queer nation, but also to California’s deplorable history of using the ballot box to discriminate against disfavored minorities.

As always, the remedy available to those who have been unfairly discriminate against lies not in so-called direct action, but in litigation challenging the constitutionality of discriminatory laws.

When the constitutionality of Proposition 8 was challenged, the trial, conducted in the federal court for the Northern District of California before District Judge Vaughn Walker, was almost a travesty.  Against overwhelming evidence submitted by the plaintiffs challenging Proposition 8, the supporters of the marriage ban presented a laughably weak showing.  When the Ninth Circuit agreed on the merits with the Northern District, grandstanding, termed-out sometime Republican state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth was permitted to butt in and petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court.  When the Court granted cert, it had the effect of staying the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance of Vaughn Walker’s District Court ruling holding Proposition 8 unconstitutional.

 When Edie Windsor took issue with the federal government charging her more than $300,000 in estate tax because it did not recognize the validity of her marriage to her late wife, Thea Spyer, she challenged DOMA, contending that DOMA’s federal definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman was flatly unconstitutional.

Today the Supreme Court sent Dennis Hollingsworth back to the pit of political opportunism he bubbled up from, and slapped Congress’s chops for it, holding in Hollingsworth v. Perry that Hollingsworth’s grandstand play against marriage failed for want of standing, and that Edie Windsor was right, and that DOMA was indeed unconstitutional.

Today, American queerfolk have good reason to celebrate.  Yesterday, posting in this blog, I speculated that the Court might either dismiss Hollingsworth as having been “improvidently granted,” or dismiss it for want of standing, given that Dennis Hollingsworth was nothing more than a cynical termed-out Republican politician looking for a vehicle to inject new life into his aspirations of running for statewide office.  If the Court chose to swing for the fences, I suggested, it would do so in Windsor.

Certainly, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Windsor contains strong suggestions that, as a matter of federal law, Congress may be as constitutionally constrained from enacting legislation simply to express its disapproval of queerfolk as individual states have been so constrained since the Court’s ruling in Romer v. Evans (1996) 517 U.S. 620, in which Justice Kennedy himself, writing for the Court, struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment that specifically prohibited any form of legal protection for queerfolk in Colorado.

To a certain extent, therefore, one of the possible lessons to be drawn from Windsor is that Romer may now be as applicable to acts of Congress as it has been to acts of state legislatures or to state ballot initiatives.  Certainly, Windsor, which had not enjoyed as much attention here as Hollingsworth, is the more consequential of the two decisions, since it reached the merits of the issue in a way Hollingsworth shied away from.

Now, in all candor, I must admit that certain friends of mine, who still nurse a considerable amount of righteous moral indignation over the institutionalized homophobia of so many government institutions throughout the country, may not agree with me that we have won two fairly substantial victories this morning.  Yet, we should, like William Hurt’s character in Kiss of the Spider Woman, enjoy what life offers, and have a piece of avocado, because it’s a long time till lunch.  My friends who reject the good tidings of this morning should remember not only how long it is till lunch, but also should ask themselves whether carping over the limitations of a victory so significant really advances the larger cause of full first-class citizenship for queerfolk.

As much as I would emerge my unsatisfied friends to have that metaphorical piece of avocado and enjoy it, I would also urge moderation on some of the more ideological separatist fellow travelers who believe that the Court should simply have rejected the entire institution of marriage altogether.  Such a view may be attractive to Uber-libertarians, but from the perspective of a society steeped in respect -- even reverence -- for the rule of law and for a constitution many of its members have neither read nor understood, a libertarian rejection of marriage is unrealistic and unsustainable.  We know what marriage means; we understand the implications and ramifications of marriage; that’s why we queerfolk has sought for so long to be able to have our lawfully plighted troths recognized as authentic marriages, not only in the states that permit them, but also by the federal government.

Last night, as I passed the long hours of darkness in fretful sleeplessness, alone and without the reassuring presence of another man next to me, I found myself hoping for what became this morning’s outcome.  I recalled the words Jawaharlal Nehru addressed to the Indian constituent assembly on the night the world’s largest democracy became independent in 1947.  “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.”

Long years ago we, too, made our own tryst with destiny, and now the time has come when we, too, redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.  While the world goes about its business, our queer nation takes a great step forward toward full and authentic participation in the American commonwealth.   As Nehru also observed, “[a] moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” Nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Be fierce.  Be proud.  Great days lie ahead.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms on the city Council.  Two decades ago, he was one of the first attorneys in California to litigate a marriage case.  After almost a generation, he may perhaps be excused in feeling a slight sense of vindication this morning.  The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.

TOMORROW

Summary: The SCOTUS marriage cases will come down tomorrow.  The longer we queerfolk wait, the more fretful we become and the more sleep we lose.  The cottage industry of prognostication is in overdrive, though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rightly notes that those who know aren’t talking and those who are talking don’t know.  It is possible that the Prop 8 case (Hollingsworth v.  Perry) may be DIGged (dismissed as improvidently granted).  If so, will the Court swing for the fences on DOMA, issuing a broad brush ruling that attempts to settle once and for all the issue of queer civil rights in this country?  If marriage prevails, it may be incumbent upon us queerfolk to rewrite much of our vocabulary of relationships.  Tomorrow.  We’ll know tomorrow.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Tomorrow. 

The long-awaited Supreme Court decisions on marriage will come tomorrow, on the last day of the Court’s 2012 Term.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine that all over the country, queerfolk are finding themselves in a state of fretful, ambiguous, sleep-deprived anticipation.

Already, speculation about the possible outcome of the marriage cases has become something of a cottage industry of prognostication.  As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has observed, those who know aren’t talking, and those who are talking don’t know.

Nonetheless, one can feel a certain degree of vindication that a number of mainstream observers and commentators have begun, in recent days, to ventilate the possibility -- one that I had ventilated a number of months ago -- that the Court may dispose of the Proposition 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, by dismissing Hollingsworth’s petition for certiorari as having been “improperly granted,” or DIGging it.  When I suggested that Hollingsworth might be DIGged, a number of non-knowledgeable so-called activists from Palm Springs chastised me rather sharply, and in rather primitive terms.  Having come very late to the cause, these activists did not know whereof they spoke.  That I might thus feel somewhat vindicated is only natural under the circumstances.  Sometimes it’s nice to be right.

And in truth, Dennis Hollingsworth’s bull-in-the-china-shop intrusion into the case represents an almost textbook example of what the law might refer to as “officious intermeddling.”  Hollingsworth had no real stake in the litigation, but he was a termed out Republican State Senator looking for some new cause to which he could nail the colors of his dwindling political future.  He had no demonstrable nexus to the litigation which would have given him any standing to butt in.  If the Court chooses to DIG the case, it may well represent the most expedient solution for a Court whose credibility has come into serious question.

If Hollingsworth is DIGged, the Court might choose to swing for the fences in U.S. v.  Windsor (the DOMA case) and issue a ruling that attempts to settle the vexed issue of same-gender marriage once and for all.  If the Court rules for us, it may well be the queer nation’s Brown v. Board of Education; if the result goes the other way, it may well be our Dred Scott.

Given that the Roberts Court has established something of a reputation for being a reliable right-wing tribunal, today’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, has not surprisingly sent a current of disquiet through much of America’s queer nation; if the court can deliver such a victory to the American right and the GOP on the issue of voting, what might it be prepared to do to America’s queerfolk?

Still, even if the Court upholds DOMA and Prop. 8, the status quo for queer Americans may well remain largely unchanged.  Certainly, an adverse decision will embolden our adversaries in state legislatures, yet there will still remain jurisdictions where marriage equality is a reality.  In blue states, progress toward marriage equality will probably continue as a matter of state law.  In red states, right-wing legislators will no doubt continue their monomaniacal effort to march us right back into the closet and to jam us so far into the back thereof that we may never again see the light of day.

On the other hand, if the Court rules favorably for marriage, it will put America’s queerfolk in the somewhat equivocal position of having to rewrite a large part of our vocabulary of relationships, and of coming to terms with having options millions of us never thought we would have.  If, to a certain extent, we have made a virtue of the crabbed necessity of not having the option of marriage, a pro-marriage holding in either Hollingsworth or U.S. v. Windsor will certainly upset that applecart.

No matter what happens, tomorrow will be a day of change for America’s queer nation.  

I may not sleep well tonight. 

Tomorrow.  We’ll know tomorrow.

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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the city council.  He has been a marriage equality activist for two decades.  The views herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.