Thoughts on Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health

Thoughts on Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health

One of the interesting aspects of the current push for LGBT acceptance is that New England is at the forefront for legalizing marriage and other non-discrimination bills. While politically progressive, there is still a lingering attachment to our more puritan past, where talking openly about sexuality is still generally frowned upon. Of course, with every generation these standards have loosened up dramatically, it is still strange that the more culturally liberal states such as California can't get gay marriage permanently passed. One wouldn't consider my homestate of New Hampshire as having a thriving gay community compared to New York and California, yet it just passed a gay marriage bill into law through a majority vote in congress.
I remember a few years ago, congressman Barney Frank predicted that once a few states got the ball rolling on passing gay marriage, more states would follow suit at an increasing rapid rate. Fortunately, the trend seems to be going in this direction, on several different fronts.
On the awareness front, many advocacy organizations have reached out to public schools and have given students the tools to start local chapters in their own schools. I remember when the gay-straight alliance opened a chapter at my high school, and over a relatively short period of time has become one of the most popular gay rights organizations targeting young people.
On the more legalistic front, Massachusetts should be held as a model for making the legal arguments against discrimination. After all, our state constitution was also used as a model for most of the state constitutions in New England. One of the lines that stuck out to me in Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health was towards the end: "The Constitution cannot control such prejudices but neither can it tolerate them. Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect." California, for all its history on gay rights advocacy, seems to have systematic issues preventing it from doing the right thing. Awareness to the specific issues afflicting the LGBT community is of course important and necessary, but there seems to be a lack in making a general constitutional argument of overturning discriminatory practices.
Once the military makes the right choice and repeals “Don't Ask, Don't Tell”, and when everyone can see that there is no detrimental effect on military morale by allowing gay members to serve openly, my hope is that this will alleviate the stigma on gay marriage. It would be hard to use the same allusions of a breakdown of moral order by allowing gay marriage, when one of the most disciplined military powers in the world can maintain and even excel by allowing members to serve openly.