C'est Moi, Catie

Guess who’s back?

Forgive me for I have sinned… it has been over a month since I have last posted. It’s been a pretty crazy month, filled with holidays, a ten-day “vacation” in South America and a brief hospital stay debatably a result of that trip.

Conservative and Liberal attorneys Olson and Boies (left to right, respectively) have joined together to represent same-sex couples in a federal case against a ban on gay marriage.

What brings me back is the recent upsurge in activity in the gay rights battle – namely local and federal court cases attempting to overhaul the alleged constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage. Last week, Conservative lawyer (and attorney for the George W Bush adminsitration in 2000′s Bush v Gore case), Theodore B. Olson contributed a pointed article to Newsweek, detailing his arguments in his upcoming federal case against the ban (in conjunction with David Boise, Gore’s attorney in the Bush v Gore case). Entitled The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage (sound familiar?), his piece cites many of the arguments we’ve already seen below: American family ideals, second-class citizen creation, and previous court cases just the beginning. He lays out the reasons we must not only allow, but embrace gay marriage in order to uphold the integrity of American ideals and of some of our most celebrated and prided speeches and court decisions. And, while undoubtedly we will be returning to this article in subsequent posts and ranting, here I would like to simply cite Olson’s closing remark as an irrefutable statement on what this battle really is:

“Americans who believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence, in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in the 14th Amendment, and in the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and equal dignity before the law cannot simply sit by while this wrong continues. This is not a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American one, and it is time that we, as Americans, embraced it.”

I encourage anyone on either side of this battle to take a look at this article as it presents an overview of many of our arguments.