Two Courts Go In Very Different Directions on Equality
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 will likely be remembered in history as an historic day for the advancement and limitation of diversity and civil rights in our society. In Washington D.C. the first African American President of the United States of America nominated the first Latina to the U.S. Supreme Court affirming the growing diversity of the American people. In California, the California State Supreme Court ruled that the narrowly passed voter initiative re-defining of marriage in the State Constitution as being solely between a man and a woman was valid under State law. In the same ruling the Court upheld the nearly 18,000 same-sex marriages licensed during the time period when it was legal in California further muddying the issues surrounding gay rights in California.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is the daughter of immigrants from Puerto Rico who came to the U.S. during World War II. Her father died when she was nine years old and left her mother to raise her and her brother as a single working mom. Judge Sotomayor grew up in the Projects in New York City and was diagnosed with diabetes as a child. This child of immigrants who grew up under very humble circumstances won admission to Princeton and Yale Law School based on her exceptional abilities as a student. Sotomayor has practiced law as a prosecutor and worked with corporate interests before being first seated to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. In 1998 she was seated on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals more than a year after the announcement of her nomination by then President Bill Clinton. Her nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama was not unexpected and she is expected to win confirmation despite rumblings in conservative ranks that she is an activist judge that will try to legislate from the bench. With confirmation likely the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation’s highest court was a bellwether moment for equal opportunity in America.
On the other side of the country and equality stood the gay community in California where the California Supreme Court ruled that the controversial Proposition 8 that made same-sex marriage unconstitutional under the California State Constitution was legal. For the first time in California a law denying equal rights to a group of people has been held up as being constitutional by the State Supreme Court. This stands as a decision that may change the face of the same-sex marriage debate across the country. With same-sex marriage legal in some form in several states the usual liberal leader of the nation is seemingly leaning in the opposite direction which begs the question of whether America is actually ready to embrace equality for homosexuals on any real level. Denying the right to legal marriage to one group of individuals based on religious interpretations of marriage as a basis for laws seems to fly in the face of the assumption of a separation of church and state in America. To have a policy of that nature affirmed by the liberal California courts could be indicative of an underlying societal prejudice against homosexuals in America stronger than belief in equality for all under the law.
Going forward Tuesday, May 26, 2009 will likely be remembered as the day when America showed its duality of nature. While we embrace diversity on some level we still have subtle bigotries that influence our laws and we as a nation have not yet come to the place where we can live the ideal of equality for all in our society.
Troy Wilson-Ripsom - Staff Writer | Give your feedback on this article. | Click icon to Digg this article
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